The Alchemist's Blog

This semester I will be trying various approaches to apply social networking to my chemistry classes. In each case i will try to start from a problem that I perceive, and then propose a social solution to this problem. I will begin with my senior seminar class for chemistry majors. The problem that I perceive is that they are not accustomed to following the chemical literature. I could require that they visit the library and read journals on a regular basis, but this has not been very successful in the past. The library is "out of their way' and "inconvenient." The solution I decided to attempt was to have each student set up an RSS feed connected to several ACS journals as well as C&E News. Perhaps if an abstract of journal articles appears on their computer, they will be more likely to at least read the abstract, and perhaps even follow up by finding the article in the journal. (More)

Recently, in his Weblogg-ed blog, (link at http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/lifelong-teachers/) Will Richardson makes the following comments: ".......So when we reframe our goals in the classroom to include having our students teach as a way to learn, we make an important shift, one that we as educators all know the power of. . . . . . . .We talk a lot about creating lifelong learners. What if we thought more about creating lifelong teachers? Would the learning be a natural outcome? Would the learning be deeper? Would our learners be more passionate if they were asked to share their learning with others? "
As an example of this approach he points to the podcasts from Bob Sprankle’s Room 208 kids. this is interesting on several levels. First, it is fascinating to see how professionally these grade school kids develop the structure of the podcast, but even more important is the enthusiasm that prevails. Perhaps all grade school classes are this enthusiastic, but I doubt it.

This brings me to my second point, which is the one I think is most significant, much of the argument, pro and con, regarding using social networking for teaching seems to turn on the question of which is more important, the process or the product. Will proposes that asking students to play the role of teachers provides them with an experience that is at least as important as any information that they may gain from the process. I agree. I suspect that in order for social networking to move beyond the current early adopters and become commonplace in college classrooms, it is necessary to accept that this is not the most efficient way to learn factual material. It is, however, the best way for students to become life-long learners and even teachers. That is more important than any facts that they may miss out on in the process.

I'm still trying to decide which aspects of social networking can be most useful for teaching chemistry at the college level. I found a wonderful place to start thinking about this; a website that lists dozens of different ways to use blogs. The URL is

http://anne.teachesme.com/2004/10/05/ways-to-use-weblogs-in-education/

Now all I have to do is find the time to examine each of these suggestions and think about whether or not they would be useful for teaching chemistry.

While at a National Meeting of the American Chemical Society several years ago, I went to hear a paper given in a symposium sponsored by one of the smaller Divisions. I was interested because the abstract indicated that the speaker was going to talk about the development of a new industrial product. The actual paper turned out to be much more surprising than I had expected. The speaker explained that a new compound had been synthesized at university lab in New Jersey. A company expressed interest in the commercial potential of this compound, and so the main laboratory was asked to recheck the synthesis and properties. If I remember correctly, that main laboratory was in Massachusetts. The compound still looked promising, so the job of developing a pilot plant operation for producing the compound was assigned to a laboratory in Europe. Finally, the commercial production was scheduled for the company’s main plant, which was in North Carolina. The speaker indicated that representatives from all the different units were deeply involved throughout the process, but the entire process was managed by a series of teleconferences. At no time did these representatives assemble in the same room. I came away from the paper with an uneasy feeling that I needed to think about how to prepare my students for this new type of industrial environment.

I am currently reading Tom Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat.” and that uneasy feeling is growing much stronger with each page that I read. In order for our students to compete with the rest of the world, it is essential that they not just understand, but be comfortable with, the process of network collaboration. More and more of the processes that once were performed totally within our national boundaries are now being shifted overseas. The availability of high-speed Internet communications and highly-trained professionals in India and China is changing the industrial environment. Increasingly, American workers are responsible for coordinating their efforts with research that is taking place thousands of miles away, and doing it in real time. Our educational system seems to be moving in the opposite direction, increasingly emphasizing independent work on high-stakes examinations. With relatively few exceptions, students are left to develop their social networking skills on their own. If anyone thinks that students are learning about a network by using Xanga or MySpace, they have not looked at pages on these sites. A typical page is almost guaranteed to make a real web designer cringe. Some students may become competent if left to their own devices, but most of them need some guidance.

If you agree with me that this is a problem that needs to be discussed, it involves several separate issues. What skills should we be teaching our students; how are these skills best taught; and how do we fit another large topic into a curriculum that is already threatening to burst at the seams?

I recently read the following description of a podcast on the new information literacy. It sounds as though it is in the direction I would like to follow, so I will link to it.

The link is:

Teaching information literacy: Who’s teaching the teachers?

Posted: 07 Apr 2006 08:12:27 +0000

Ewan McIntosh
University of Stirling, Scotland
http://edu.blogs.com

For many educators, “information literacy” is just another buzzword with little meaning for their day-to-day teaching and the learning of their students. So far, it’s fallen to IT departments and librarians to teach students the intricacies of university email systems or library catalogs.

Information literacy in the 21st century, however, is less about technicalities and more about the way we teach. Students learn in the classroom and outside it. (emphasis added!)

Social software has created new ways to seek information. Less relevant today is the official reading list and the subsequent frustration when paper books and journals are not in stock. Far more relevant are the decisions formerly taken by the educator but now transferred to the students to make. It this viable information I’m looking at? How can I turn it into useful knowledge? How can I gain a greater wisdom in my subject? Knowing where to find knowledge and how to interpret it is where information literacy comes in.

This screencast will explore some of the reasons why these skills are not being taught as well or as often as perhaps they should be. If taught, and not just caught, skills in exploiting social software can help student and teachers make better judgement on information and opinion and turn this into valuable knowledge. If caught, and caught wrongly, social software can lead to false information, narrow scope and less rigor.

So, what do I hope to accomplish by writing a blog? My basic intention is to try to understand how we can help our students at SUNY Oneonta develop a personal Virtual Learning Space (VLS) during their four years here. What are the components that should be included in a student's basic education to connect him or her to both humans and organizations that serve as the foundation for his or her VLS. I think that this is the new information literacy. Knowledge no longer consists of what is in my head or in my books, but rather is the collective wisdom of the group of individuals (“nodes”) that I am connected to and share with. Can I define the set of social software tools that will support this. (More)

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• Using an RSS feed in a Chemistry class
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