John Moore’s June 14, 2010, post to this blog described recent changes to the Journal of Chemical Education. The decision was made to discontinue posting items to this blog that were published in JCE, such as the monthly Especially for High School Teachers column, which had previously formed a large part of the content on this blog.

This summer during a visit back to Madison, Wisconsin, John invited me to continue posting to this blog, with a view toward posts that simply relate to items of interest to the chemical education community, rather than published JCE items. Although I do not claim to be an experienced blogger, I welcome this opportunity to share in a less formal way. There are frequently pages from chemistry education-related mailings that I receive, where I’ll either turn over the corner or tear out a page that interests me. It often merely gets filed away to hopefully resurface at a time when it relates to something I’m working on. Many of these items would probably benefit a greater audience.

Yesterday, the Summer 2010 issue of The Magazine of the Chemical Heritage Foundation arrived. A lunchtime browsing resulted in two page tear-outs. The first was an article entitled “Lights, Camera, Action!”, which announced a Chemical Heritage Foundation video competition for high school students. The article describes: “The competition, ‘It’s Elemental,’ invites students to pick an element from the periodic table and tell its story through a short documentary-style video. The video competition, announced in March at the National Science Teachers Association convention, is one of the ways CHF will celebrate the International Year of Chemistry, designated by the United Nations for 2011. Winning entries will become part of an interactive periodic table available on CHF’s Web site.” There are two categories, for individual and group entries. The three to five minute videos are due January 7, 2011. In September, students may make their element selection, as only a limited number of video entries will be accepted for each element. Additional information is available here at the CHF Website. Students and teachers will find the Periodic Table Live! collection, which is part of the ChemEd Digital Library, a great resource for researching individual elements. JCE subscribers have access to the October 2009 periodic table-themed issue that was published in connection with last year’s National Chemistry Week theme, and was John Moore’s final issue as editor-in-chief of JCE.

The second “tear-worthy” page was a large graphic announcing a celebration of the 100th podcast of CHF’s Distillations collection. The podcast archive boasts a wide range of topics, including a recent offering on summer BBQ. The podcasts can be streamed from the Website or downloaded as MP3 files.