[neact] Re: NEACT Summer Conference - please respond

  • From: Sandra Pratt <SPratt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "neact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <neact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:51:13 -0500

Hi,

I am just going to check again if anyone has any 5th edition Chemcom books that 
we could borrow for the spring semester for Woodstock Academy High School in 
north eastern CT.


Sandy Pratt
Woodstock Academy


Life is chemistry!
________________________________________
From: neact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [neact-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Jerusha Vogel [jj@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2011 3:01 PM
To: neact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [neact] NEACT Summer Conference - please respond

Hi all,

This summer’s NEACT conference will be held Aug 1-4 at St. Joseph’s in Maine.  
It is 30 minutes outside of Portland; 2 hours north of Boston.  In recognition 
of the UN declaring 2011 the International Year of Chemistry, we have decided 
to have the theme of this year’s summer conference be:  Chemistry in Today’s 
World.  I have been thinking about the presentations for this topic and have 
listed below several I would like to see.  I welcome your suggestions for 
speakers and other ideas for presentations.

One type of presentation under this topic would include teaching in today’s 
world.  Presentations could include what is the public’s view of chemistry and 
how can we, as chemistry teachers influence that.  Also, given the recession, I 
would love someone to lead a workshop or presentation on ideas of how to teach 
effectively with overly large class sizes.  We should have a presentation on 
teaching critical thinking and the scientific method vs. teaching content to 
meet the requirements of the various standardized and AP tests.  I would also 
like to see a workshop on how to teach critical thinking.  Texting is becoming 
the bane of many teachers – does anyone want to lead a workshop on how we can 
use this type of ubiquitous technology for our advantage?   We keep hearing 
that we are way behind other countries in Math and Science.  What are the other 
countries doing differently?  Can we learn from them?

Another type of presentation could be  around world issues:  The third world 
has many issues that chemistry can mitigate or solve.  One of the biggest 
issues is safe drinking water.  I would like to see a presentation on the 
challenges and chemistry solutions that are out there to bring clean water to 
people.  I recall a Chematters article from several years ago that talked about 
some communities that once they built wells became terribly sick due to Arsenic 
leaching into them.  I’m sure that there are a plethora of great water related 
labs that someone could connect to that presentation with a workshop.  Food is 
another huge issue facing much of the world.  How is genetic modification, 
pesticides, organic farming and such addressing these issues?  Another good 
presentation would be from someone who can explain the various roles that 
chemistry played in cleaning up the BP oil spill.

One of the roles that we as educators face is trying to connect chemistry to 
the “real” world.  As part of this, many schools have started teaching a 
forensic science course at their schools.  There were several requests in the 
feedback forms after the last conference to have some forensic workshops (with 
the focus on the chemistry more than the bio).

I am currently trying to see if we can have an additional component of the 
summer conference include an in-depth safety training.

These are ideas – I’m sure that you can come up with even better ones under 
this theme.  I need your help in coming up with good presentations and 
workshops and help finding presenters.  If you can give me any suggestions on 
people to contact who might be able to talk on the ideas suggested above, or 
ones that you come up with, PLEASE contact me.  I can’t do this without your 
help.  Feel free to volunteer yourself!  Our budget is pretty low, as we try to 
keep the conference cost down so keep that in mind when thinking of speakers.  
However we have found that sometimes even professionals from industry are 
willing to speak for free or just a small honorarium given who we are.

Thanks so much for your continuing support for NEACT and all your great ideas.

Jerusha Vogel
NEACT President
2011 Summer Conference Program Chair

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