Abstract:

Despite the increasing dissemination of smartphones and tablets among students, the adoption of teaching and learning strategies supported by these mobile devices is still incipient at educational institutions.

A few Apps for smartphones and tablets can be used in teaching Chemistry, in order to increment the teaching and learning processes, especially as regards the possibility of “experimenting” and “experiencing” representations that are specific to submicroscopic chemistry and simulations involving chemical phenomena which would not be possible without the support of these technologies.

Seeking to encourage the adoption of smartphones and tablets to teach Chemistry, we are developing a research study whose main objective is to understand how the mobile devices can contribute to the teaching and learning processes in Chemistry from the perspective of mobile learning and of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Based on some results of this study related to the selection of Apps for tablets and smartphones with a potential for education, and to recognizing the possibilities of designing and developing pedagogical practices in Chemistry using these Apps [1], we created a short duration course within the initial training of Chemistry teachers, aiming to enable and potentiate the development of pedagogical practices to teach chemistry supported by mobile devices.

The course was developed as an extension course lasting forty hours from June to November 2016. Twelve future Chemistry teachers (students in the Teacher Training Course (Licenciatura) in Nature Sciences: Biology and Chemistry major) participated using their personal mobile devices.

This course enabled creating spaces for teaching and learning in the context of mobility in order to make it possible to develop a culture of learning with mobility with the actual use of smartphones and tablets, by developing, following and evaluating Chemistry teaching and learning methodologies in the context of mobility and BYOD.

The course participants were instigated to think and problematize actions that would integrate the mobile devices to Chemistry education. During the development of the pedagogical practice in this extension action, five proposals for teaching and learning Chemistry were created in the context of mobile learning and BYOD, which dealt with the following topics: stoichiometry; periodic table; macromolecules; greenhouse gas effect – in the context of fuels; and forensic chemistry.

In the presentation of this work we will detail the planning, development and results of this initial teacher training course.

References:
[1] A. Grunewald Nichele, E. Schlemmer, “Contributions of a pedagogical practice for the naturalization of mobile technologies in chemistry education”, In: ICERI2015 Proceedings, pp. 830-870, 2015.

Acknowledgment: IFRS/CNPq

Keywords:

Initial teacher training, Chemistry education, tablets, smartphones.