Teaching Resources

Date: 2013.01.25

Posted by Edyta Grzesiak (Poland)

Message: A very hands-on activity oriented website with practical and realistic experiments on water treatmnent, purification, filtration etc.
It allows young students to investigate and Filtrate their local water - it gives details of an experiment that students can perform to analyze and purify water from their local water supply.
It also contain animations and virtual labs. Each epreriment is followed by discussion questions and further development and research section which allows to investigate the topic in more detail.
All experiments include a list of prerequisites, equipment and a thorough description and explenation. they can be performed both in and outside the clssroom.

Date: 2012.10.03

Posted by Gülşah TANRIVERDİ (Turkey)

Message: This resource is downloadable and also can be use online at home or class. It is attractive for students that have opportunity to experience water filtration and cycle. There are interesting article about the necessity of water for us now and future. That makes students engage and think it can increase the students’ interest toward chemistry. While doing virtual experiment, permits students to manipulate variables or parameters and then observe the consequences of their choices. That makes them learn faster and better. It can be used in lower primary school science curriculum. This material can be enriched with more interactive and exercise which helps students to recall what is learned already or not.

Date: 2012.09.30

Posted by John Pountos (Greece)

Message: This is an easy to use teaching resource that is equally useful for use in class or for individual learning by the student at home. The resource gives all the necessary information required for its implementation by using the right amount of text in pop-up images. I find it very important that once you click on the resource, it is pretty much straightforward what needs to be done. No special downloading is required and the resource does what it also say, ie it gives a “stimulus to engage”.
In this way, I do believe that it can increase students’ interest toward chemistry. It proposes easy to perform and very interesting individual activities, it also incorporates a nice interactive “game” on the water filtration which really invites the average student to engage in it. Another important issue is that the resource deals with a subject which is related with the everyday life experiences of the students (water resources). In addition, the subject of water use and treatment in space is also a subject that does excite the curiosity of every average person and of a young student even more. This teaching resource contains also the element of interdisciplinarity: it combines chemistry, physics and systems’ engineering.
The resource contains nice illustrations and the correct language that can actually help students to understand better and faster. In addition, the resource makes available a large collection of links for further information and the authors have taken care to link the teaching material to the existing curriculum.
In my opinion, this resource does not propose per se an innovative teaching approach. It is designed in a straightforward manner by using combining several standard elements in a way that it can succeed in enhancing students’ motivation to engage in chemistry learning. So in this sense, it constitutes a new fresh teaching proposal of a very interesting subject.