ICT AND CHEMISTRY EDUCATION

The Framework Education Program for Primary and Secondary Schools in Czech Republic puts increased demands on the training of chemistry teachers. Students must understand their interpretation not only of the nature of the subject being taught, but also of the broader context, especially in the relationship between chemistry and society and the environment. The program also calls for the guidance of students to scientific thinking and phenomena exploration through experiments. On the other hand, such experiments must be safe, in accordance with valid legislation. The preparation of chemistry teachers must necessarily have a more complex character. In this respect, many of the current learning texts are inadequate, as their focus is too narrow and many phenomena are not explained in relation to the outside world and experimental results. A useful help in the preparation can be an ICT that can be used as a source of new comprehensively compiled information, and it is possible to compare different views of several authors. Additionally, the Internet may not only function as a source of information but also for objects (images, animations, simulation of experiments, etc.) that can be used in teaching, as well as free programs available to replace many expensive commercially available programs. Our contribution deals with the use of the ICT in teacher education, especially in the preparation of their teaching materials, as well as the search for interesting internet links related to chemistry and the search and testing on the Internet of freely available programs and their usability in teaching chemistry. The result is, among other things, increased computer literacy of teachers, especially when working with the ICT, time savings in the preparation of study materials, and potential savings in funding for effective use of freely available programs.