eLearning in the School System

New Ideas for Teaching Chemistry

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To support and encourage the teaching and learning of chemistry – with the objective of helping the students perform well and raising the number of Kenyans pursuing chemistry-related careers – is what Jared Ogunde’s project is designed for. The “Chemistry Aid Initiative” is a project carried out by the Scientific Advisory and Information Network (SAIN), a non-profit organisation established in 2001. Jared Ogunde has been Chief Executive Officer of SAIN since the initiative started. SAIN partners with the Chemistry Video Consortium (CVC) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) of the UK.

All over the world, chemistry scores high in “most boring subjects” rankings. On the web, many students complain about that fact. To reveal a subject’s more fascinating aspects, teachers have to make the subject more tangible. Ogunde is convinced that eLearning devices can help to nurture an interest in chemistry and make the traditionally boring subject worth studying. For his Kenyan project, he introduces multimedia educational resources into the classrooms, enabling students to “see” live chemical reactions and carry out “hands-on”, practical chemistry. During the course of the project, students and teachers are to make extensive use of the online educational resources offer by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Chemistry Video Consortium (CVC).

Such sites include www.focusbiz.co.uk/chemistry and www.rsc.org/chemistryimages. Via these resources, students can carry out real-life experiments at a pre-university stage. The CVC series has also been edited for use within schools and colleges. A sample shows very detailed and accurate insights in how to prepare a laboratory for experiments – a good opportunity for students to get acquainted with the important facilities without having them at hand in reality.

The first step for the initiators from SAIN was to visit schools and colleges in order to raise the awareness of students and educators on the importance of using ICT resources such as chemistry multimedia resources and online chemistry educational resources in the teaching and learning of chemistry. During the visits, access to the online chemistry resources via broadband Internet connections was given to demonstrate to both students and educators that online resources can also be used in the teaching and learning of chemistry.

December 18, 2008

Newsportal: eLearning in the School System