The great EiC blogorama!

Education in Chemistry blog is just beginning, so we thought it would be useful to have a look and see what other chemistry education bloggers are doing for some inspiration. We put the call out last week on Twitter and even in that short time, we got a great response.

So here is the Great Education in Chemistry Blogorama! We plan to update this every so often, so please let us know in comments and blog that you like, with an example blog post you found interesting.

Regular hits

First up are the blogs I know about and tune into regularly along with an example post to get a feel for that blog.

• The Chronicle Flask is a great blog from Kat Daly, a chemistry teacher. It looks at where chemistry appears in everyday life. An example is the post Phabulous Phenol. Twitter: @KatLDay
• Compound Interest is a new blog producing infographics relevant to chemistry. It began with looking at group properties in the periodic table, and then moved on to food chemistry, and one of the latest is a fantastic infographic of common chemical transformations in organic chemistry. It's fast becoming a hugely popular chemistry blog. Twitter: @compoundchem
• Possibilities Endless is Katherine Haxton’s blog about university teaching and chemistry. Check out her post on advice for new lecturers. Twitter: @kjhaxton
• Crystallography365 is a blog celebrating the International Year of Crystallography with a crystal structure each day and some details about it. See this post on pyrite as an example. Twitter: Crystal_in_City

Images from Compound Interest (above and left) and Crystallography365 (right)

New discoveries

One of the nice things about doing this post is that I have come across new blogs. These are listed below.

• Two nice blogs from training teachers: FineTraces 786 and Adventures in Chemistry Land
• A popular blog for A-level chemistry: Chemistry Stuff
• A blog from University of Edinburgh for undergrads and postgrads compiling lots of useful resources: Kirsop Labs
• CLEAPSS Video Blog: YouTube Chanel Twitter: @CLEAPSS
• A nice blog whose recent posts describes the use of student blog assignment: OChemPrep
• A blog on Green Chemistry from University of Toronto.
• A blog on microextraction techniques in Analytical Chemistry

The header of the blog Finetraces786 has a blackboard theme

Setting up a blog

It is easy to create a blog. Popular platforms include www.wordpress.com and www.blogger.com. Once you register your blog name, you can enter your first post and publish. Then you are a blogger! Be sure to let us know in the comments when you do.

What other blogs do you know of or what type of blogs do you like to read to support your teaching of chemistry?