Congratulations to Richard Thornley who has had an article published about his innovative teaching methods published in the Guardian Newspaper. Richard is an IB Chemistry teacher at the United Nations School in New York. Regular users of this site will have come across some of the videos that Richard has produced to support the teaching and learning of IB Chemistry as I have embedded many of them in the relevant pages under Teaching each topic & sub-topic.

The article in the Guardian has the heading “Teaching molecules using games, Gangnam Style and retro 3D posters”. What Richard has been doing with his students is using IT imaginatively to illustrate many of the key IB Chemistry concepts. This article explains how the shapes of molecules and ions (Topics 4.2.7 and 14.1) can be brought to life using video games (Garry’s Mod), interactive connectors (Microsoft Kinect - where students can use their limbs to rotate and vibrate molecules), flash gear and iPad augmented reality Applets (Aurasma). The article is well worth accessing as Richard explains how he uses all these different techniques with his students. The embedded video below shows one way in which he makes use of Aurasma.