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Interactive online games, animations and simulations are a great way to engage students. Here is a small collections of resources. Please share others you may be aware of.
Chemistry Animations and Games Collection
(5 items)
Chemistry Songs Collection
(48 items)
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Hi Pamela,
Thank you for sharing these online chemistry animations, games, simulations and songs. I will definitely try to use them in my chemistry classes. I am open to trying anything that will help my high school students learn the chemistry content.
I would also like to share what we (chemistry teachers in our school) have tried this year that helped us with content (these are not animations, games and simulations though)
1. Hog Hilton to teach electron configuration which I found successful. Most of my students this year got electron configuration using this strategy. http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/ModuleInstance/75453/Hog%20Hilton%20-%20e%20configs.doc
2. Periodic table trends straw activity. This activity helped my students understand the periodic table trends because the straws created a visual representation. Whenever I refer back to this lesson, it was easier for my students to connect and recall what they observed based on the arrangement of the straws in relation to the periodic table trends.
www.unit5.org/chemistry
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Simulations are great - thanks for posting these resources! The University of Colorado at Boulder has a large collection of searchable simulations for lots of different (mostly chemistry and physics) topics. Their site can be found at
http://phet.colorado.edu/
Many of their simulations are on the particle level, and therefore are a great help for getting kids to understand what's happening on the microscopic or submicroscopic scale during macroscopically observed phenomena. The simulations are searchable and are sorted in several different ways (by grade level and/or topic). If you don't have access to a bank of computers for students to use on a regular basis, they also work well on an interactive whiteboard - my students (and I teach 9th graders) actually argue over who gets to "try it" next. They're a great way to get kids hooked into a new topic.
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R
1635 Points
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Thanks for posting, Pamela! I could use these resources to differentiate instruction. I have checked them all especially the chemgame tutor. They are awesome! Please keep on posting :-)
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I will look into these suggested sites! I am a fan of most resources on chemmybear.com. My AP students found chemmybear shapes to be helpful for illustrating the 3-D shapes of molecules. You can find animations, hints, and tutorials for various topics at this site. I think it's worth it to poke around a bit!
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Hi Pam-
Thank you for starting this thread! I teach Physical Science, and for most of my students, the semester on Chemistry is pretty much their first introduction to atoms, the Periodic Table, and bonding. It is very, very hard for them to conceptualize at first.
There is a great interactive bonding game at http://www.learner.org/interactives/periodic/groups_interactive.html. I project it on my SmartBoard and have the students come up and make the combinations. For at least half of them, it provides the 'a-ha, so that's why there's two sodiums but only one oxygen in sodium oxide' moment. It makes it far more tangible.
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Hi Sarah, I teach 9th grade too and have similar experiences teaching Matter during 2nd semester. Your interactive bonding game will really help me with the "how" and "why" questions about the periodic table. They love games on the computer, plus I can have them take notes (or draw pictures) of the bonded compounds/molecules for each question. Great for kids with handwriting/processing issues.
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Sarah
I played with the animation for a while. It took me a while to figure out how to use it. It give a nice demonstration of forming ions compounds by balancing charge. I wonder, however, if the way polyatomic ions are depicted as single entities creates problems later on?
Pam
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I'm going to try some of these, thank you for sharing. I wanted to add mahjong chemistry, because it makes memorizing polyatomic ions so much easier and fun for my students.
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Iowa State has some good animations along with some lab experiments. http://group.chem.iastate.edu/Greenbowe/sections/projectfolder/animationsindex.htm. In particular, I like to use the reactions of metals and metal ions experiment (simulation) and electrochemical cell experiments (simulations). For example, in the former, students can construct their own activity series while watching the molecular scale reactions. In the latter, I ask students to work together to determine the conditions for the maximum amount of silver that can be plated on an electrode.
There is also a simulation of a mass spectrometer which will show how isotopes of a sample element are separated. The data can then be used to calculate average atomic masses.
http://www.media.pearson.com.au/schools/cw/au_sch_derry_ibcsl_1/int/massSpectrometer/0703.html
Finally, I have to agree with a couple of the earlier posts, molecular workbench (which has a great set of simulations on molecular self-assembly) and PhET are my favorites.
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These are such great resources. Thanks for sharing!
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Want some simple chemistry concepts in an interactive Excel simulation format? See the large collection of Excelets at http://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex/excelets and view the mathematical modeling approach to handling data plus the "Chemical Excelets" and "MatSci Excelets" too.
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THANK YOU very much for sharing the resources. I have used some, but many are new to me. Thank you for the question and the replies.
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