One of the things that initially attracts most people to the study of chemistry is the visual aspect of chemical change. Teachers know (and students frequently remind them) that laboratory experiments and demonstrations are an important part of chemical education. The WWW is an access portal to some interesting work in this field. The quality of what is available for free varies widely. Some projects are very mundane and others are cutting edge. This section of the site is an attempt to organize what I've found and put it in one place. My personal take on video demos is that I don't like them as original sources. I don't think chemistry teaching should be done solely with video. However, as references for something that was missed in class or presentations of something that is not possible to do in class videos can be useful. What is "media"? In collecting these links I've had to answer that question for at least myself. I've decided that anything which goes beyond simple text and still images is "media" for my purposes. So included here are videos of all sorts as well as Shockwave animations, interactive JAVA simulations and even animated GIFs. "What plugins do I need to view these files?" Beyond the standard browser you will need some kind of video player. The newest versions of QuickTime Player and RealPlayer are pretty versatile and can handle most formats (including Windows .avi) but not the new Windows Streaming Media. Shockwave is also needed for some of the files. The Chime plugin may also be required in a few cases. Links to these free players/plugins are found below. IE 7 users take note! My experience of late has been that many of the media files now will not work with IE 7. This is likely due to changes in the handling of the OBJECT tag by IE. Many sites have not updated their code and thus it appears that some links are to blank screens. As of the date given on the front page of this site, all media links have been checked with Firefox and were found to be working, even though most would not work with IE 7. The "missing" content works fine with IE 6.Sources for the files are referenced by number to the listing at the end of each page unless they are mine. Remember, I'm an amateur, so don't expect outstanding production values on my first few attempts! My goal is to create a record of what was done in class that students can refer to at a later time.
|
G