Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Community of Effort When Neil Gordon founded this Journal in 1924, a maWe continually seek new ways to support jor goal was to “encourage community of effort in chemical education”. As ideas about education have matured and mecommunity of effort, and dia of communication have changed, means for encouraging community of effort have now much of that community broadened. This Journal has always served as a focal point for the chemical education comis on the Web. munity and an important medium for collaboration among chemical educators, and JCE ChemInfo: Organic is simiwe don’t expect that to change. We continular to other collections in the Naally seek new ways to support community of tional Science Digital Library (1) and effort, and now much of that community is in the JCE Digital Library. You are on the Web. also encouraged to contribute to any An example is a new online column, A screen from JCE ChemInfo: Organic. of these JCE DLib collections: JCE ChemInfo: Organic, edited by Hans Reich, that is de• JCE SymMath—teaching materials that make use of scribed on p 495. I encourage you to use it and contribute symbolic mathematics packages such as Mathcad and to it. JCE ChemInfo: Organic is a dream come true for those Mathematica (2) teaching organic chemistry. It includes tables of pKa values in water, DMSO, and the gas phase for hundreds of com• JCE QBank—questions intended for use in lectures pounds, tables of proton and 13C chemical shifts, and defi(ConcepTests), homework assignments, quizzes, and exams (3) nitions of acronymns, reaction names, and other • JCE DigiDemos—an online forum on chemical demnomenclature. Reich has also included links to other sources onstrations that includes all Tested Demonstrations (4) of nomenclature rules and data. As a tool for generating homework, quiz, and exam questions this collection is excel• JCE WebWare—Web-based materials, including simulent. JCE ChemInfo: Organic also provides in one place an lations, animations, and interactive calculations and graphs (5) invaluable source of a broad range of data and information • JCE LrnComOnline—online instructional modules for students working on assignments or research projects. designed to foster learning communities involving students on Even though I am not an organic chemist and do not teach different campuses via electronic communication (6) organic courses, the value of this Web site is obvious to me. The feedback from those who do teach organic has been uniIn addition we would like to create new collections and formly enthusiastic. to augment the collection of manipulable molecular strucMany who have visited JCE ChemInfo: Organic have tures available in our monthly Featured Molecules column suggested other data that could be included. Almost invariand in JCE WebWare (7). With your help we can continue ably those data are available somewhere on the Web, but they to improve and expand JCE’s support for community of efmay or may not be in a format that is accessible to students, fort in chemical education. Please contact me with your conand they may or may not have been vetted for accuracy. JCE tributions and suggestions regarding our community. ChemInfo: Organic provides references to the original papers that reported the data, which are organized so that students and teachers can easily locate what they need. If you Literature Cited (all sites accessed Jan 2005) have your own collections of data and links to Web sites that complement JCE ChemInfo: Organic, column editor Reich 1. National Science Digital Library. http://nsdl.org/. would like to incorporate them into the collection. To con2. Zielinski, T. J. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 155–158; http:// tribute, email
[email protected] with a description of the www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/SymMath/index.html. data and explanation of their use. 3. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 158; http://www.jce.divched.org/ Organic is not the only chemistry subdiscipline that JCEDLib/QBank/index.html. makes use of a broad range of data. JCE would like to find 4. Vitz, E. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 160; http://www.jce.divched.org/ volunteer editors for columns similar to JCE ChemInfo: OrJCEDLib/DigiDemos/index.html. ganic that support teaching analytical, inorganic, physical, 5. Coleman, W. F.; Fedosky, E. W. J. Chem. Educ. 2004, 81, 159; and biochemistry courses—and many more. If you have colhttp://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/WebWare/index.html. lected this kind of information for your students in any area 6. Zielinski, T. J.; Long, G. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 335; http:// of chemical science, please consider volunteering your site www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/lrncom/. to be included in JCE Online. If you are willing to receive 7. Coleman, W. F. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 264; http:// and evaluate contributions from others, how about becomwww.jce.divched.org/JCEWWW/Features/MonthlyMolecules/; ing a column editor? Just contact me and describe what you http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/WebWare/collection/open/ are interested in contributing. JCEWWOR010/chime.html. www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Vol. 82 No. 3 March 2005
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Journal of Chemical Education
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