Abstract:

The European Union proposed to cut 10% college dropout rate in 2010, so that Spain should have been cut 20 points for being in range with the European average. Despite being a major challenge, it is necessary to take urgent actions to reduce the level of educational failure and increase the resources for education, as any reform of the education system needs to be provided with additional income to be effective. If investing in education can be expensive, not doing so, can get out much more expensive. The competences they should develop along their way through undergraduate studies will confer a cross-curricular leadership, as well as oral and written abilities.

A blog is defined as a type of website or part of a website, and are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other materials such as graphics or videos. They are usually interactive tools and can be distinguished from other static websites. They were firstly implemented by Justin Hall in 1984. Since then, over 156 million public blogs are in existence (data updated 16 February 2011).

This experience is focused on the shooting of educational videos as a learning tool for the laboratory experiments carried out in the Organic and Medicinal Chemistry subjects, at Pharmacy Grade (University of Seville) in order to promote the development of relevant competences. From an educational perspective, the right atmosphere to communicate with other classmates or/and instructors was achieved. Furthermore, the self-production of laboratory experience-based videos that can be downloaded later from “YouTube” video website, leads to a remarkable input of the student in their own learning procedure, as well as facilitates the task of writing their personal laboratory-notebook.

References:

1) Benito, A. y Cruz, A. (2005): "Nuevas claves para la docencia universitaria en el espacio europeo de educación superior ". Madrid: Narcea.

2) Council of Europe higher education series Nº 4 (2006): "Recognition in the Bologna Process: policy development and the road to good
practice". Council of Europe Publishing.

3a) Scott, P. 2001. The Blog. 2001. http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/weblogs/. Downloaded, 12th December, 2010.

3b) Cebrián, J.L.Mi vida en un blog. 2007. http://www.elpais.com/articulo/tecnologia/vida/blog/elpeputec/20071105elpeputec_1/Tes.
Downloaded, 12th December, 2010.

4) Wikipedia. Blog. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog. Downloaded, 12th December, 2010.

5) Website of 10 top blogs in Spanish. http://www.alianzo.com/es/top-blogs/lang/espanol. Downloaded, 12th December, 2010.

6) Wikipedia. Blogger. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger. Downloaded, 12th December, 2010.

Keywords:

Educational videos, blogging software, self-learning, organic chemistry lab, medicinal chemistry lab.