Great news, confirmed yesterday by representatives from the Education Resources Awards (ERA) - Learn Chemistry is a finalist for an Education Resources Award!

We have been shorlisted in the category 'Secondary Resource or Equipment - including ICT', alongside established education services such as Mathletics, and SAM Learning.

The ERAs are linked to the annual Education Show, at Birmingham's NEC, a major event for education resource suppliers and their users and customers in schools and colleges.

Following on the heels of our shortlisting for the 2013 BETT Awards (the winners of which will be announced next week) this is yet more support for our work at the RSC.

We're investing in chemistry education, and we want Learn Chemistry to be a global hub for chemistry resources and services, whatever level of study. 

Wish us well for the Education Resources Awards on the 15th March!

Karen J Ogilvie looks behind the scenes of EiC 50 years ago

Education in Chemistry was founded 50 years ago by Ronald S Nyholm and continues to fly the flag for innovation and best practice in chemistry teaching.

As we are celebrating EiC’s 50th anniversary year, I thought you may like to know a bit about its background.
It was quite difficult to choose exactly when the anniversary actually should be. Should it be volume 50? Should it be from the initial conception, the formation of the editorial board, the appointment of staff, the commissioning of articles or the publication date? ‘All of the above’, seemed to be reasonable. In the end, I decided that volume 50 in its entirety should be one big celebration.

To reach this conclusion, I had to do a bit of historical research down in the basement at Burlington House, where Kate Bennett (librarian) kindly helped me to search the archives for essential information that was locked away within the secrets of Chemical Society minute books.

In the beginning… the proposal
For the full story, I had to go back to a report from the Education Committee meeting held on 17 November 1962 and discussed at the Council meeting on 14 December 1962 - an investigation had been started to determine the feasibility of a ‘British Journal of Chemistry Education’. After considering various recommendations, the scope and content was agreed and the Committee suggested that the Royal Institute of Chemistry (RIC) should retain control of the title. A plea was made to launch the journal as soon as possible.

Funding agreed
Minutes from the Council meeting held in March 1963, recorded a letter from the trustees of the Nuffield Foundation who been approached by Professor Ronald S Nyholm (after whom the RSC Education Award is named) which stated that they were prepared to make a ‘repayable grant of £10,000 to meet initial launch costs and establish the journal which would be produced by the RIC.’ The offer was accepted by Council. One of the conditions attached to the offer was the appointment of an independent editorial Advisory Board for the production and management of the journal.

Editorial board appointed
In June 1963, all of the invitations to serve on the Editorial Advisory Board had been accepted and Professor Nyholm was appointed Chair. It was agreed that the journal should be called Education in Chemistry. It was also announced that the editor would be Dr FW Gibbs, so we can justifiably celebrate the 50^th anniversary in 2013.

The Editorial Advisory Board met in July 1963 to discuss the shape and content of the journal. It was noted that suggestions for articles had already been received. An Education Committee report from October 1963 states that Education in Chemistry would be published quarterly. It records Dr Gibbs’ plans for the launch and that the first issue would be January 1964.

Publicity
Publicity leaflets were distributed in October 1963 with the Journal of the [Chemical] Institute and the School Science Review, to attract subscribers in the UK and Overseas.

Spotlight on Volume 1, issue 1
So here we 50 years on and able to look back at the very first feature published in Education in Chemistry: ‘Modelling of chemical structures with expanded polystyrene spheres’ by KS Teplow. This is a fascinating feature and reading this you will see that chemistry teachers 50 years ago not only had to know their subject, they had to be master model makers too! Honestly, what did we do without Molymod Kits or Cochrane’s Orbit sets?

The time and skills needed to make molecular models 50 years ago would appear to be a luxury that we no longer have. You will find this article on our website at http://rsc.li/EiCV1I1a. During the year I will make more of the early Education in Chemistry articles available through the website and Learn Chemistry.

50^th anniversary prizes
In recognition of Education in Chemistry’s 50^th anniversary, Molymod have kindly donated kits as prizes for anniversary competitions. Sign up for the e-alert at http://rsc.org/e-alert to find out about competitions and how you can win prizes for your class.

[A note from Duncan: Check out Education in Chemistry's 50th anniversary issue, one of our featured resources on the Learn Chemistry homepage this month] 

Teamwork and practical chemistry skills were put to the test recently as 13 schools competed to be Top of the Bench in the RSC Bristol and District Region local heats.


















Using equipment at the award-winning Bristol ChemLabS, teams of four students from each school had to organise their own time in order to do three experiments and complete a quiz. Expert staff from Bristol University outreach team were on hand to ensure that everyone worked safely.

Although the competitors had to work hard to complete everything within the time, they also thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Talking to several members of the teams, participants said the event was “loads of fun!” and that the experience had been “really good!”

So to the results – in 1^st place it was Cheltenham Ladies College, Sidcot School came second and Cheltenham College were third. The winning team will go forward to the National finals.
 
If you think your school has some keen, budding chemists who are prepared to put in an extra effort why not consider entering a team of your own! In the meantime you could also encourage your students to enter our science communication competition for the Bill Bryson Prize.

Beth Anderson is RSC Regional Coordinator for South West England and works with the education team.
Contact her at beth.anderson@bristol.ac.uk
 
 

The best presents are always those that have involved just a little bit more thought and obviously the ultimate gift (perhaps with the exception of that enormous reindeer-motif sweater you got a few years ago) is one that has been handmade especially for you. Students from local schools had the opportunity to put their practical skills to the test doing just that at a ChemNet event held on 18 December at the University of Glamorgan. 

Under the expert guidance of Dr Suzy Kean, 18 budding chemists from local schools discovered how to make scented bath bombs in a classic metal carbonate reaction; they created festively coloured tea lights which will burn with differently coloured flames and in the final activity the laboratory became temptingly scented with sugary smells of homemade crunchy honeycomb (but of course this couldn’t be consumed for health and safety reasons). Earlier in the day, the students found out how to grow their own crystal Christmas trees.  

Before going home with their own ‘goody bags’ of handmade gifts for mums, grannies or sisters, the students were treated to commercially made chocolate-covered honeycomb and magic Christmas tree kits kindly donated by Dr Dayna Mason, the Regional Coordinator for the RSC in Wales. However, I’m sure that next time a last-minute gift is needed these students will be having a go at doing some chemistry in their own kitchens in order to create the perfect gift.

I am hoping to run a similar event for students aged 14-16 or 16-18 somewhere in the South West region, so if you would like to host a crafty chemistry event at your school, college or university in time for next Christmas please do get in touch with me, Beth Anderson, the Regional Coordinator in the South West. Why wait until Christmas! How about arranging this for Valentine’s day, Mother’s day or just any day you feel inspired to do some creative chemistry!
 
Beth Anderson is RSC Regional Coordinator for South West England and works with the education team.
Contact her at beth.anderson@bristol.ac.uk

If Thomas Hardy had been a science teacher, his darkling thrush in the eponymous poem would surely have sung about the coming Association of Science Education conference - high on his agenda for the new year.

And whilst less blast-beruffled than we were at Liverpool in early 2012, we were no less excited about our plans for the coming year when we arrived at Reading on Wednesday. Item one for the Learn Chemistry team - release a major new update to the site!

And so, yesterday, in between busying ourselves with the world of science education at ASE 2013, we quietly updated our flagship home for chemistry education resources and services. 

We've added a bunch of visible and not-so-visible changes - many in response to user feedback, and many that we trust our users will enjoy and make the most of. Here's a quick run-down:

• Bolder, simpler homepage. In response to user feedback we've simplified the shop window for Learn Chemistry. Now the focus of attention is on four key areas - search and browse (top), highlighted resources (middle left), community and news (middle right), and key site areas and links (bottom row).
• New Logo! The Learn Chemistry Octopus is there, but he's making a little bit of way for our message: 'Enhancing learning and teaching with the RSC'. It does what it says on the tin.
• Improved search results. Hitherto searching for, say, 'Protein Chemistry' yielded a surfeit of 'chemistry' results, and not enough 'protein chemistry' results. Jeff, our database guru, has made this aspect of search more useful and intuitive.
• New resource browser. Below the search bar you can quickly and easily narrow the huge list of resources and data pages on Learn Chemistry from >3400 to a manageable dozen or so with just a handful of clicks. Select age range, audience, subject, context, or media to get rapidly to the right place.
• New information panels on the homepage. Easier and more fun to browse around, with bigger, bolder images, and clearer text.
• New Talk Chemistry community panel. The homepage now features a rotating feed of the latest comments from our 1000-user-strong chemistry teacher community on MyRSC.
• New newsletter and feedback links on every page. All pages now have a combined social and contact panel. Let us know what you think, or register for updates using the feedback and newsletter links.
• More compact and cleaner results listings. We've standardised and cleaned up the design scheme for our resource results listings, and added a nifty colour-coding system that helps you see at a glance which results are substance pages, resources, course material, and so on. 
• Better resource video and document viewing pages. We've widened our resource pages - adding a nifty browser, and quadrupling the area for document and video previews. Web links will now also display either on the resource page, or will link you directly to the destination without the need to click through manually.

We hope you like what we've been up to. 2013 will be a busy and exciting year for us at RSC Education, so continue to watch this space for technical and design updates that will help you get even more out of our resources and tools for chemistry education.

PS: A big thanks to the team at Rave, James Bennett, Jeff White, and Rich Grandison for toiling away on the site whilst we drank Bellinis and had our feet massaged at ASE...