iPads Get a Serious Workout!

Students create some fantastic screencasts!

Just before I first started out as a high school chemistry teacher I really thought I knew my material.  After all I had four years of college level chemistry behind me.  How could teaching high school  be that hard.  But I soon realized that passing a written test on some content, even with a good grade, is not anything close to explaining that concept at an understandable level to 35 energetic high school students in the period right after lunch.  I remember after a few days of my first teaching job saying to myself, "I really need to know this stuff a lot better!"  Some days I would be what we call "just 10 minutes ahead of the students."  On top of that I would get a question from a good student that would just stump me.  And then there was this one student that everyday kept saying, "Mr. Bradbury, I just don't understand!"  I must confess that I let that student exasperate me at times.  I would try one explanation and then another and then an example.  And the student just kept saying, "But I don't understand!"

Teaching a concept  requires a whole deeper level of understanding.  I have often wished I could give my students and oral exam where each one has to get up in front of the class and explain a concept to everyone else.  But then again that can be terrifying!  I remember when my Algebra 1 teacher made me get up in front of my whole class one late September school day during a typical late summer Southern California heat wave.  There was no air conditioning in classrooms back then.  I remember wilting under the pressure!  The only thing that saved me was that I could face the chalkboard and not my classmates.  But I could still feel the arrows of their stares on my back.  I wanted to climb under my desk.  I learned that I clearly did not understand Algebra!

Or was it that I was so full of fear in front of the class that I could not have performed even if I had all the necessary knowledge.

Nevertheless I think the best proof of deep understanding of a concept is being able to clearly articulate that concept in a very relaxed  conversational manner.  Screencasting allows just this.  One of the most difficult concepts in chemistry is Molecular Orbital Theory.  Understanding MO theory requires an accumulated knowledge, the ability to think abstractly, and the ability to see and draw three dimensional objects in two dimensions.

Screencasting can be an "equalizer"

The other thing that screencasting allows is a bit of privacy.  The students can really wrestle with concepts on their own.  Then they get to prepare their presentation, explain it and edit their explanation.   (Hey, as a teacher I take lots of time to prepare myself!)  The pressure is low.  What my colleagues and I are finding is that some of the best screencasts are produced by some of the "forgotten" students that sit quietly in the back of class hoping the teacher will never call on them.  Screencasting lets everybody have a chance to shine.

The Assignment

I decided to have my students create a screencast of their explanation of how to draw the hybridization box diagram and molecular orbital diagrams of a particular molecule or ion.  This is no easy task!  I must say it is a challenge for me to do it.  Even more it is a huge challenge to draw intricate diagrams on the iPad.  Here is the specific assignment.

1. Draw the box diagrams showing the ground state, excited state and  hybridized state for your assigned molecule or ion as shown in class.  Show the VSEPR structure.  Label all orbitals and show the relative energy of each.  State the type of hybridization (sp² etc.)  

2. Draw the contour diagram for the assigned molecule. Label angles and label orbitals.  No credit will be given if drawn incorrectly.  Show orbital overlap correctly and show electrons.  Make all drawings large.  State the shape of the molecule.  http://tinyurl.com/luw

Teacher Expectations Exceeded (Big Time!)

I had a three hour block of lab time.  Secretly I hoped that they would take about an hour and then we could continue working on our chemistry experiment.  But I was so surprised, yet again, by how seriously they took this assignment.  Some of them spent over an hour just planning and preparing how they were going to present their explanation.  Most of them had already completed the assignment on paper.  Some of the students went over the three hours and a few asked if they could keep the iPads during the 1 1/2 hour lunch break.  

They really put me to shame.  When I do a screencast that is say five minutes long I will spend no more than ten minutes on  the whole process.  Yes I am more experienced and so I take less planning, but when I saw what some of these students had done I must say I was overwhelmed.  When I compare their work to some of my screencasts I just want to crawl under a rock!  Here are a few that were created on Educreations.  (The Educreations posts are not as easy to embed in a blog as are ShowMe screencasts)  

Even if you have no idea what a molecular orbital is I think you will be very impressed by the work of these students.  They do a fantastic job of presenting. And this isn't just two plus two equals for this is very high level stuff.  What level on Blooms Taxonomy do you think this hits?

Link to 1st student created screencast on Educreations

Link to 2nd student created screencast on Educreations

Link to 3rd student created screencast on Educreations

These students really took pride in their work.  Some of them were very interested in my response to their work.  I think they felt like they really accomplished something intellectually significant.  I think they did!

iPad workout part 2:  Working on a digital lab report in Organic Chemistry

Last semester I told my students to create a digital lab report for my Organic Chemistry class.  At that time I had no class set of iPads and only one or two students had their own.  Most of the lab reports were created with a desktop or laptop.  But now with the iPads I think this could be a lot easier.  So for the distillation lab I told my students that they would be doing a digital lab report.  Everything that is covered in a regular written lab report must be presented in a screencast.  I recommended the app Explain Everything.  The big hurdle is that the students are not allowed to take home the iPads, although 4 or 5 have their own.  Usually we do two distillations, simple and fractional.  We do these distillations over two days.  But simple distillation often goes so fast, and the real hold up is setting up the apparatus.  This time I decided to do both distillations in one day.  They would have to work quickly, but they would only have to add the fractional column for the second distillation.  By doing this in one day it opened up a whole three hour lab period for working on the digital lab report.

Again, these students spent a good deal of time just prepping for their screen cast.  They uploaded text and pictures and diagrams.  I was impressed with their hard work.  In the end the three hours was not enough time for them to complete the lab report.  This was good for me to learn.  Normally they have to spend significant time outside of class working on the report anyway.  But many of them do not have iPads of their own.  (Although they seem to be appearing more and more as the semester goes on.  Way to go parents!)

Several students asked if they could come in the following week to work on the report.  So what I chose to do was give them one week to complete the digital report and send me the link.  I think some or many of them will come and borrow an iPad while I am on campus in another class or in my office hour.  So part 2 is to be continued...

Apps: Deeper into Molecular Modeling

Seeking and Finding: Two very good apps 

Molecular Orbital Modeling with Mols Editor

There are so many apps out there for modeling molecules.  For my General Chemistry class I want to build simple molecules and be able to look at them three-dimensionally.  I also want to be able to look at the molecular orbital contour diagrams.  So far the best app for this has been Mols Editor.  In previous posts I have shown the basic 3-D structure.  Now I want my students to draw those crazy contour diagrams.  These are hard to visualize and draw because they are so abstract and 3-D on top of that.  Mols editor lets you build the molecule and then there is an button to display the molecular orbitals.  Here is a picture of methane CH4.

You can see result of the SP3 hybridization of carbon and the overlap with the hydrogen 1s orbitals.  My students found this very helpful.  Of course even harder to draw and visualize are the double and triple bonded molecules.  Here is an example of ethene C2H6.

Because the app lets you rotate the molecule it is very easy to see and then attempt to draw. Why didn't they have this stuff when I was suffering through Gen Chem!!!  And I had to walk barefoot in the snow to school...  Well it makes it easier to teach anyway.

Bond Angles and R/S configuration and Spectra with iSpartan

I also want to show my students the bond angles.  Unfortunately Mols editor does not yet display bond angles.  At least I have not seen that yet.  But another app called iSpartan lets you draw the molecule and then it renders the molecule in 3-D.  It also allows you to analyze bond angles, R and S configuration and it shows the NMR and Infrared spectra.  Here is an example of finding the bond angle.

When you highlight three connected atoms (circled in above photo)  the app automatically calculates the bond angle.  As you can see in the picture of CBr4, which is tetrahedral, the bond angle is 109.5 which is correct.  I figured this app out a little too late for my current General Chemistry students, but maybe I will use it next semester.

If a particular atom is chiral the app tells if the arrangement is the R or S.  This is of particular interest to my Organic Chemistry students.  Here is a screenshot of bromo-chloro-fluro-iodomethane.  And you can see it is the S-configuration of it.

The last thing I want to point out about iSpartan is that you can also obtain the spectra of various molecules if they are in the available database.  Next week we are doing the steam distillation lab of cloves.  We will extracting Eugenol.  I am happy to say that this molecule is in the data base.  So my students can run the IR on their extracted sample and then compare it to the one on the app.

As you can see in the upper left corner, H-NMR and C-NMR also are available.

So for me, Mols Editor and iSpartan are two of the best apps for molecular modeling.  There are others that I will "review" later.  The one downside of iSpartan is the cost.  Currently it runs around $20.  Mols Editor has three versions.  One is free.  The one I am currently using is $1.99.  I find it to be quite adequate.  The third version has self-testing.  It costs $4.99.  I have not been able to find that as useful as I had hoped to yet. But these two apps really, to me anyway, really enhance my job of teaching a science that is 3-dimensional.  Chemistry teaching will never be the same once this type of tool catches on!