Teaching Resources

Le Coin des Élèves (Students’ Corner)

Académie de Besançon

Web Site/Portal, Downloadable software, Downloadable material

Basic, Medium, Advanced

Modelling

Fundamental Chemistry

Lower Secondary School, Upper Secondary School

French

• The prerequisites

The prerequisites are taken into account for each activity since these are sorted by level of studies.

• The contents

On the website of the Académie de Besançon, in the section “coin des élèves“ can be found several resources called:
- Activités en ligne et animations (Online activities and animations)
- Conférences (Conferences)
- Logiciels utiles (Useful software)
- Tutoriels (Tutorials)
- Culture scientifique (Scientific literacy)

• The aims
• Task description

This review is limited to the online activities and animations.
Those resources are found clicking on the “animations” and “autres activités” nails. Then, the level of studies and the subject “chimie” must be selected.

For every activity and animation, there are an assessment (number of stars) and comments. These comments sum up the content, the available tools and the chosen approach. A “top 10” of the best resources is available.

According to the topics, interesting and diversified approaches are proposed: mind map, diagnosis sheet, interactive book, molecular models, animations, application sheet.

Here are some examples:
a) Mind maps: students can revise knowledge and skills that are necessary to master a topic. The mind map is often associated to a quiz or a multiple choice to check the knowledge and skills acquired.
b) Animations are
- documentary resources (the periodic table for instance),
- visual supports to better understand certain phenomena (such as the battery)
- animated molecular models, useful to make virtual experiments (such as gas in a syringe)
- learning games (“l’eau dans tous ses états“ about water) so that the student can learn certain concepts in a fun way.
c) The interactive book (“le courant électrique” about electric current) promotes the progressive discovery of certain concepts through animations, explanations and exercises.

• How to use it in class

Thanks to the diversity of the resources the teacher can build learning sequences with various ICT tools. The tools can be used at different moments of the learning (situation scenario, documentary searches, knowledge revisions…). Moreover, according to the favoured methodology, the activities can be used in the class-group, in small groups or individually.

• Points of strength

With the diversity of ICT tools available per topic (mind map, diagnosis sheet, interactive book …), their assessment and the comments, the teacher can easily choose the most relevant resources when building learning sequences.

• Points of weakness

The activities are sorted according to the curriculum in French secondary schools. However, the link to each activity is sufficiently explicit to easily identify the topic addressed.

• Scientific reliability
• Pedagogic value

This website proposes activities made up of various ICT tools per topic of study.
Those tools are diversified so as to vary learning methods, which is essential to maintain the students’ interest.

Thanks to the mind maps, the student can revise key concepts and make links between them. This tool is very interesting to structure learning.

HELMo - Inforef