Duration: 1. 11. 2021–31. 10. 2024
Project number: 2021-1-SK01-KA220-VET-000027995_5
Partners:
- SLOVENSKÁ TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA V BRATISLAVE
(Slovakia – coordinator) - KATOLÍCKA UNIVERZITA V RUŽOMBERKU
(Slovakia – partner) - STREDNÁ ODBORNÁ ŠKOLA CHEMICKÁ VLČIE HRDLO
(Slovakia – partner) - STREDNÁ PRIEMYSELNÁ ŠKOLA SAMUELA MIKOVÍNIHO
(Slovakia – partner) - GYMNÁZIUM JÁNA KOLLÁRA SO ŽIACKYM DOMOVOM V BÁČSKOM PETROVCI (Serbia – partner)
- MEDICINSKA ŠKOLA „7. APRIL“
(Serbia – partner) - STŘEDNÍ PRŮMYSLOVÁ ŠKOLA CHEMICKÁ PARDUBICE
(Czech republic – partner)
Project summary
Chemistry is one of the fundamental part of the science subjects taught at secondary schools of general as well as vocational specialization. This subject is taught almost at all secondary schools in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Serbia. The scope of chemistry subjects depends on type of secondary school. It is taught in all classes at gymnasium, but in significantly lesser amount compared to secondary school specialized in chemistry. The practical demonstrations are considered as one of the most important and irreplaceable part in teaching to better understand simple chemical experiments. These give students the opportunity to better understand the chemical process or the subject being taught. That is why practical demonstrations, experiments and laboratory exercises are the basic activity in chemistry teaching. However, in many secondary schools, these practical experiments are very limited or completely absent due to lack of laboratory facilities, expensive chemicals or restrictions in terms of safety and work with toxic substances. It resulted to a lack of understanding of the subject content by students and consequently small interest in studying chemistry at universities. From this reason, secondary school teachers have expressed their interest in audiovisual materials that could be used to improve full-time teaching by better presentation of individual exercises, or for distance learning.
The goal of the ChemIQSoc project is:
to increase the interest of students in STEM subjects, including chemistry, as well as to popularize chemistry among students of gymnasia and secondary schools. It will be achieved by innovation and adaptation of subject content to current trends and the development in chemistry. Other goals of the project include increasing the competencies of secondary school teachers by improving their capabilities to explain current trends in various areas of chemistry in an interesting way. This will be achieved by the preparation of audiovisual materials that will allow demonstration of experiments for a better understanding of chemistry. The participation of chemistry teachers on training courses will help them to understand current trends in various fields of chemistry. The incorporation of prepared audiovisual materials into daily teaching activities will significantly help to innovate the way how chemistry is taught in secondary schools and gymnasia.
The ChemIQSoc project outputs will include detailed working procedures, photo documentation of the experiment, pdf manuals and audiovisual materials for
- 10 practical experiments in organic and pharmaceutical chemistry
- 10 practical experiments in inorganic chemistry – 5 practical experiments in classical analytical chemistry – 5 practical experiments in instrumental analytical chemistry
- 5 practical experiments in environmental chemistry
- 10 interesting popularization experiments of general chemistry
The other important output of the project will be
- text book for secondary school teachers with current and modern knowledge in chemistry
- 3 organized teacher training courses
Kick off meeting
17.–18. 3. 2022 – Bratislava, Slovakia
The project kick-of meeting was held in Bratislava from March 17th–18th, 2022. All partners from Slovakia, Serbia and Czech republic met in person at the Slovak technical university. It was a great opportunity to get to know each other and to learn more about the participating organizations, their problems and their expectations from the project. During the two days, we went through all the project activities to clarify the individual goals and tasks to be accomplished and we discussed the project implementation details.
Next activities:
- August 2022 – Teacher Training Course in Bratislava (Slovakia)
20.–25. 8. 2023 – Pardubice, Česká republika
At the end of the summer our school hosted the partners involved in the ChemIQSoc project. Representatives of high schools and universities from Serbia and Slovakia gathered in Pardubice. In the first days, videos with chemical experiments were filmed in our laboratories. They will be used as teaching material in chemistry classes after editing.
In the following days, a series of science-popularization lectures for teachers on interesting current topics in chemistry (e.g. kitchen chemistry, cancer detection, alcohol and its effect on the human body, detection and identification of dangerous and addictive substances) was held.
