On-Line Assignments in Chemistry

Orit Hescovitz, Department of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Haifa, Israel
Nurit Decalo, Science Education, Weizmann, Rehuvot, Israel

Technology has a crucial role in life in general and in education in particular. Beyond enhance learning to be more appealing, in chemistry education technology usage has another advantage: the ability to encourage students to model and illustrate particles, interactions and processes that are difficult to visualize.

For this purpose, 20 computerized assignments were developed in the framework of the national center for chemistry teachers – half of them by the Weizmann institute of Science team and half by the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology team. These assignments were adapted to the chemistry curriculum and distributed to the chemistry teachers' community in order to allow teachers to implement them in their classes or developed additional assignments for their own students.

In order to develop the assignments, sites that display apps with animations and simulations related to chemistry subjects were located. The apps were chosen by their ability to be operated in class and suit different students' abilities and needs. For each app, a suitable assignment was constructed that includes instructions on how to download the app and operate it on the laptop or the Smartphone, questions about the subject, link to student's previous knowledge and how the subject is relevant to everyday life. It also includes a teacher's guide with didactic suggestions and answers to the questions in the assignment.

Following are some examples for the subjects at the focus of these assignments: state of matter, the periodic table, balancing equations, the world of the atom, oil refining, nuclear fusion, solubility of various kinds of salt in water, dissolving sugar and salt in water, energy processes, molecular polarity, stoichiometry, acids and bases virtual lab, measuring pH of different materials in different concentrations, fatty acids and more.Enter the body of your abstract here