Teaching Resources

Date: 2013.06.16

Posted by Olga Maria Cabrita Nunes (Portugal)

Message: The history of science and the science made of stories constitute poles of attraction for the integration of the study of chemistry in a playful and natural way. This resource presents the particularity of drawing attention to the importance that some women had in chemistry and physics research. It presents various information that arouses curiosity and that allows the combination of the study of chemistry and physics with relevant elements from general culture.
The approach is extremely interesting since its structure leads the student through the lives of eight relevant researchers (Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie Goeppert-Mayer, Dorothy Crowfoot, Gertrude Elion, Rosalind Franklin and Rosalyn Susan) from the last fifty years of the twentieth century.
As a didactic teaching resource, it allows students to perform, in an autonomous way, specific tasks and activities. They are oriented to the achievement of group work, strengthening collaborative work, by searching biographical aspects of the chosen researcher and the particular topics of her research area, in the field of chemistry, in a simple way, though without interactive activities. By knowing better the life of the scientist, the desire to know what was also investigated increases. It can be a very interesting way to learn chemistry and physics.

Date: 2012.10.03

Posted by Marco Rametta (Italy)

Message: This is a collection of webquests about women in physics and chemistry. All of them introduce a brief biography, propose several research activities (look for information about the woman and her work in chemistry) and put the evaluation criteria.
We can work with eight different women: Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Irene Joliot-Curie, Marie Goeppert-Mayer, Dorothy Crowfoot, Gertrude Elion, Rosalind Franklin and Rosalyn Susan.
It has a tutorial guide to work in classroom and most of resources needed to work are linked in the website.
Aims:
- To change the attitudes of students towards studying science, especially chemistry.
- To illustrate original thoughts on chemistry and its benefits as career choice, especially for women.
- To provide a training to students a scientific culture.
- To increase students' interest in chemistry studies and careers and the role of women in chemistry research and industry.
- To develop an appreciation of how science has contributed to the historical and cultural development of our society.
Use in classroom:
All the activities proposed in the webquests are designed to be done by two students teams, looking for information, writing articles and editing a website. Each webquest has an assigned time of 2 o 3 hours. All of them can be used with students 15-16 -17-18 years old.
Points of strength:
Facility in access and use of the resource.
Careful references and resources.
Evaluation criteria shown in the webquest.
The website promotes collaborative learning.
Points of weakness:
The webquests don´t have interactive activities.
It hasn,t been updated with new characters during last years.
It doesn´t have references to the role of women in chemistry today.
The teaching resource described could be useful for me because it’s possible to know all the true history of thinking progress about chemical matter.
I think it can increase the students’ interest toward chemistry for previous reasons, but I don’t think it can help the students to understand better and faster.
Through the work of these great science women the students could have got ideas about several approaches to chemistry and science.