ohhey[blog]

Loosen Up

We see more clearly in retrospect…sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not so good. Thinking back on this year, I realized that I’ve gotten lazy wit... Read more

Student Lab Manual Finished

My AP Chemistry class has published their final draft of a general chemistry lab manual. You can see and download the student edition here or you ... Read more

I’m Open For Business

As I continue musing and thinking about the last year using a flipped classroom, ideology and philosophy changes that I’ve made flood my thoughts. ... Read more

Lessons Learned in Soccer

It has been an insane three weeks for my wife and I and I am just now getting back to writing and following Twitter again. Coaching has changed my ... Read more

Letting Go

As we head into the end of the school year, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the content I was able to finish this year. I am fortunate in that I ... Read more

Don’t Miss the Forest

Any time the iPad is mentioned, mouths start watering and eyes well with tears as they think about the possibilities…myself included. The iPad has... Read more

What Makes Me a Great Teacher?

Ok, so the title is a little self-indulgent, but don’t judge me just yet. I was thinking back about student teaching earlier this week and how my c... Read more

The Flipped…High School

Greg Green, Principal As I was browsing the internet this morning, I noticed a new discussion has been posted on the Vodcasting and Flipped Class N... Read more

The Problem With Writing

I recently had a discussion with other science teachers about the role of writing in our classrooms. The discussion that ultimately emerged revolv... Read more

Lists

I’m fairly new to the education blogging realm. I haven’t even been posting consistently for a year now, but I’m getting better at it and I’m refin... Read more

Fear of the Cell Phone

I have to be honest…I almost posted this yesterday, about an hour after I posted about the fishbowl discussion. But, I decided to bite my tongue a... Read more

The Fishbowl – Not Your Normal Discussion

As a science teacher, we don’t get many opportunities to discuss difficult topics. Sure, content discussion happen, but I envy the english and phil... Read more

Opportunity to Succeed

I presented the flipped class and mastery learning models of instruction at the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference in Malaysia this past March. This is my... Read more

Virtual vs Tangible Labs

At this moment, the AP Chemistry exam is in 19 days. I have about 1.5 chapters to cover with class only 3 times per week. I was at this same point ... Read more

Student Nuclear Chemistry

I love being a teacher and I love being a soccer coach. But, those tend to get in the way of one another. Being an international school, we compete... Read more

Why I Am Skeptical of Sal Khan

I suppose the title of this post says everything: I am skeptical of Sal Khan and I am worried about the influence he is having on education. Now, i... Read more

Terminal Velocity

This week, my students are about to finish unit 7, thermochemistry. Looking back one year, I was a little bit further ahead (in terms of content) b... Read more

Evidence of Learning, Part 2

A few days ago, I wrote a postt about a particular student, “Anne,” coming to grips with a very difficult topic to discuss…evolution. Even though I... Read more

New Look, New Blog

Welcome to the new-and-improved blog (previously Mastering Chemistry). As I’ve gotten more and more involved with the technology, almost by default... Read more

Evidence of Learning – A Case Study

I teach in a small, private school in South Korea. This has huge benefits, like small classes and intentional interaction occurring every day. Th... Read more

An Argument for the Presence of a Teacher

I came across a very interesting post this morning from Dr. Lee Skallerup Bessette at College Ready Writing entitled “What Ed Tech Can’t Do.” She ... Read more

Changes That Are Coming

After having most of this afternoon to mentally decompress from everything that happened this weekend at ETC11 and after a 2-hour advice session fr... Read more

Looking forward to Web 3.0

I recently read a blog post that talked about “Web 3.0” and how it has already begun to move in. (I can’t find the link, but I’ll update when I tra... Read more

New Twitter, ETC11 Thoughts, etc

Some additions since my last post: I have fallen into the trap of Twitter, and I must admit, I love it. You can follow me @bennettscience. I’m at ... Read more

And on to the fourth…

As we head into spring break next week, I’ve been contemplating the changes that I’ve made this year in chemistry. I started with assignment-based... Read more

Another classroom model

Again, I’m still trying to figure out how to run my class. The mastery method is great, but it is very hard to assess student work effectively. S... Read more

Open-source fever

I’ve developed a fever over the past week. I found a program called MacPorts, an open-source project aimed at making other open-source projects av... Read more

Jeopardy in class

I’ve written a lot lately about general chemistry, but I’m also using technology in my AP Chemistry class when I can work it in around all of the p... Read more

The Mol Project

I started teaching the concept of the mol (not the animal…the amount) in chemistry this week. The problem is, the mol is such an impossibly large ... Read more

115th Anniversary of the X-Ray

Yesterday was the 115th anniversary of the discovery of the X-Ray. Physics Buzz, a blog run by PhysicsCentral.com, ran an interesting post on the ... Read more

Moving to Moodle

I’ve been running my course thus far via Google sites (which I love). The site itself is easy to set-up, although the customization can take some ... Read more

Periodic Table of Cereals

Update 9/18/2012 – Unfortunately, the videos no longer work because the students closed their accounts. Feel free to use this Google Doc for the ac... Read more

Objective-based grading implemented

The first attempt at anything is usually inefficient, clunky, and unpolished. That’s how I feel with my class at the moment. I’m trying to polish... Read more

Coming Up: Student Periodic Tables

Part of the mastery system is assessing students through their own, unique work. For this next unit (beginning today) students have an opportunity... Read more

Parent conferences…how to explain?

One of the challenges I’ve faced so far this year is explaining to parents how the class works and trying to convince some of them that this method... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com