Concept Map – Syllabus

As part of the Ontario Extend modules we are to create a Concept Map of our syllabus. Though this one needs more work before presenting it to the students. I have hope that it might spark some ideas for the students of how things are connected and it might prove to be a useful practice activity for them. Student often compartmentalise what they learn about science – this goes is this box never to be used again – and forcing them to make the connections might help them in realising the concepts are related and rely on each other.

Analytical_Instrumentation

Random Creativity

To spark our creativity, Ontario Extend has challenged us to create a story from a random set of images and post it on Twitter. Never one for brevity, I am 13 characters over once I add in the #hashtag and @OntarioExtend :O. Below is the story in its entirety.

RandomPictureGenerator

One little monkey jumping on the bed. He fell off & bumped his head. Momma called the dr & the dr said put that monkey straight to bed. He’s got an early plane to take, don’t forget to pack some cake. Momma got all set & ready to bake & set the alarm to be sure to wake.

Striking The Flint

As the first step of my journey with extend.ecampusOntario I am tasked with identifying a concept that is often misunderstood in my discipline and then creating an analogy that can make the concept make sense to the students.

In analytical chemistry students are often asked to create solutions which are a certain concentration of a particular element (example 100 ppm zinc).

Zinc

To do this, they cannot use just pure zinc, they have to use an ionic compound that will dissolve in water to give the desired amount of zinc (such as zinc sulfate). Students will typically forget to factor the sulfur into their calculations and as a result make a solution with the incorrect calculation.

The analogy would be needing to have 30 long-sleeves in your suitcase. If you have dress shirts available and you know there are two long sleeves per shirt you need 15 shirts to give you the correct “concentration” of sleeves in your suitcase.

Shirt in a suitcase