Mike W’s Blog

As I mentioned in a previous post we’ve just begun to explore the use student-generated wikis to help students construct chemistry knowledge, making use of ChemDraw to generate chemical structures. After an initial introduction today, ChemDraw seems to be a great way to create very nice chemical structures for a final page. However, it’s definitely not as quick as drawing the structure on the back of a napkin, so the extra time involved in creating the structure could limit a good wiki collaboration. I read that the open source course management system, Moodle, is looking to integrate a collaborative whiteboard currently available through Jabber / Coccinella. I tried it out and it’s pretty simple. Since Moodle has a Wiki module and will soon have an interactive whiteboard via Coccinella, we could do what we need with Moodle and ChemDraw. While the wiki page is undergoing development, the students could “hand draw” the chemical structures and then use ChemDraw for the more formal, final presentation.

One of the output formats of Coccinella is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) but not jpeg. Although the new Mozilla browser supports SVG display, I didn’t want to bank on the fact that everyone’s browser would support SVG. I found a nice SVG converter online, so I was able to convert the molecule above to a jpeg from home, without photoshop.

GE has a collaborative online whiteboard as well that looks potentially useful. The sketching session can be saved, so that you can see the progression of the diagram as well as the final product.

We’ve formed a group to explore the potential of gaming for education. Here’s an interesting implementation in organic chemistry. This paper (created via wiki) explores two games, OrgoFrag and Wheel of Orgo, and has several screenshots and examples. Here’s an example of one taken from the following website.

You can even download the free version or full version of Unreal and download the games from Drexel. Setup is explained here. There were some issues with video drivers and parallels (I’ve been converted to Mac / Parallels user) when I tried this, so I’ll have to wait to try this on a real PC. I’m trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. I’m not a gamer, so this is new territory for me!

Structuring the activity so that students that are pressured by time constraints or hindered by the competitive atmosphere can still get the most out of the opportunity would be very important.  If we decide to explore this, I’ll share those strategies in a future blog.