Lies, Damn Lies, and the Internet February 28, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so far
It’s the time of year when Advanced Higher students hand in lists of chemicals needed for their project work.
It can get quite hectic as science at advanced level is very popular. We are asked advice, from both the pupils and staff, about the practicalities of certain procedures, the availability of various chemicals and solutions and the best way to utilize our scientific apparatus.
It’s common for pupils nowadays to source information from the internet, usually utilizing google or some other such search engine.
It often comes then as a complete surprise when they are told that what they have written down doesn’t make any scientific sense whatsoever. The usual response is “ I got it from the internet so it must be true”.
Personally if I am searching for any scientific material, I take a while to cross reference, verify sources etc before accepting anything as being the correct version. Theres an awful lot of rubbish out there and it can take a while to sift through.
Whilst the internet is an enormously useful tool it must be treated as one and time taken to learn how to use it rather than just switching it on and being regarded as the all knowing 
oracle.
Here are some tips
· When asking for an amount of something don’t use the term “some”. Find out how much you need for the whole experiment and ask for it in grammes
· If asking for a solution please request it in moles per litre (M). We don’t do parts per million.
· Work out how much of a solution you will need for the entire experiment before the technician makes it up. There is always a small amount of difference in each batch of solutions that are produced. Having it all made up in one batch ensures that the exact same concentration will be used throughout.
· If what you find on the internet doesn’t make sense to you, it will most likely not make sense to your teachers or the technicians.
· Don’t always take the first thing that comes up on a google search and remember not everything on Wikipedia is correct.
· Take your time to thoroughly research what you are going to be doing and use a mix of books, the internet, scientific publications etc.
· No, we don’t have a monkey.
21st Century?? February 21, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so far
“I’ll be finished processing the order for MGS in a few days boss”
I have had reason over the past few days to do a number of orders for the science department.
Throughout East Lothian we use an automated system called PECOS which works reasonably well the majority of the time but its limitations are usually reached when pieces of quirky scientific equipment needs to be sourced.
We use a lot of 1ltr ice cream containers for storing kits of bottles and jars and have been trying to source them all over the country as our last supplier now only takes orders for 3000 or more.
We eventually managed to source a supply, but they weren’t on our system.
Asked if they would accept a credit card they said they didn’t have the facility to do so. Today they informed us that they were treating it as a cash sale and required a cheque and for us to fill in a form to register with them etc etc
I find it quite astounding that in the 21st Century there are still companies living in the dark ages, I wonder if they will be delivered by hand cart ?
Large companies that don’t have a website or are unable to take orders electronically, who require cheques and complicated form filling before purchase, should really take a look around and get themselves geared up for what is nowadays common practice. If they dont then customers will simply go elsewhere to conduct their business with a click of their mouse.
Vod Pod, collect all your videos in one place February 13, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized, social media , 5comments
I came across Vod Pod today whilst fine tuning fiddling with the settings on my blog. It allows you to keep all your favourite videos from google, youtube, myspace etc etc in one place and either post them to your blog or send them to friends.
It was very easy to sign in to and took only a few moments to locate my favourite videos and upload them to my “pod”. As schools increase their use of social media it looks a good way of keeping everything in one place and enabling them to be shared easily with others that are interested.
I also added google video to the sidebar to the right of this main blog column. It will display, in a random order, videos that I have taken that are relevant to my blog. It was easy to install and adds a little more functionality to the blog page.
Just click the play button and it should spring into life.
Kaboom !!! (Dont worry Don its fine) February 8, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Uncategorized , 4comments
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Today we had a visit from the University of Edinburgh’s chemistry department.
They put on a small roadshow and the pupils were invited to carry out experiments, including examining hydrogen (above), building perfumes and TNT from chemical models and making blueprints from chemicals and strong light sources.
I used bubbleshare to make a slide show of the investigations carried out with hydrogen which you should be able to see above.
For those interested in the technical aspect
1. 6M Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH).
2.Aluminium foil
3. The Aluminium foil was scrunched up and placed into a side arm flask with the 6M NaOH solution.
4. The resultant hydrogen gas is bubbled through washing up liquid.
5. When sufficient bubbles have formed, a lit taper is placed into them.
6. Ka
7. Boom !!!!
GLOWing in Tranent February 5, 2007
Posted by Brian in : GLOW, Uncategorized, teachmeet , 3commentsI was at Tranent primary on Friday for a GLOW mentors day.
The idea of the day was to plan our Teachmeet Roadshows sessions and to formulate strategies for rolling them out in East Lothian schools.
The ability to competently handle digital images will be important when GLOW is up and running as a lot of social media applications are image friendly.It’s a great way of sharing good practice, seeing what others have been up to and how such things can help improve learning and teaching processes. Also its very good fun.
After a briefing from Karen and Ewan we were given various little tasks to accomplish. We familiarised ourselves with bubbleshare which is a bobby dazzler of a programme used for making annotated slideshows of pictures uploaded from digital cameras or the internet. You can see my efforts here.
Before lunch we were given a choice of subjects to participate in the afternoon session.
They were digital imaging for secondary schools, podcasts, animation, film and blogging.
I volunteered for digital imaging topic and worked alongside Tess and Robin to come up with ideas for a two hour inservice to eventually be rolled out to East Lothian schools.
Over the next couple of hours we searched for online sites where digital images can be simply edited online thus removing the necessity of having specialist image editing software installed on any computer.
We started on a timeline and then fleshed out the bare bones of our ideas before taking part in a half hour wash up session where the respective groups discussed their own projects.
Our task couldn’t be finished on the day so Tess, Robin and myself will collaborate and hopefully get everything tied up soon.
I would just want to say thanks to Ewan, Karen and the rest of the team for organising an excellent day. I learnt an amazing amount in a very short time.
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