SOCRATIC - Science and Math Tutorials at Their Finest

SOCRATIC

I am very impressed with a relatively new start up web site called SOCRATIC. 

The site offers access to video tutorials for Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics and Calculus.  Each subject is organized into a separate page with the topics for each subject organized by into sections, each section provides a series of videos from educators who have been invited to share their material.  

The Socratic site is clean and easy to navigate. All of the videos that I have viewed have been extremely helpful and well made. The lead educator is Tyler DeWitt. Who does an outstanding job of presenting material in a clear and a concise manner. He breaks the material down in such a way that it is   logical and easy to understand.  Some of you may have seen his TED Talk - Hey Science Teachers --- Make It Fun. 

Currently for Chemistry, Socratic provides the opportunity for students to post questions for the Socratic team of educators to provide explanations or solutions. 

I have incorporated videos from the site as support and reinforcement for my owned flipped lessons.

Here are some links to examples of the Socratic site.

http://socratic.org/chemistry/the-behavior-of-gases/ideal-gas-law

http://socratic.org/biology/introduction-to-biology/the-characteristics-of-living-things

http://socratic.org/physics/forces-and-newtons-laws/defining-force/videos

http://socratic.org/calculus/limits/finding-limits-algebraically/videos

Electrical Circuits Tutorials PhET Simulations

The University of Colorado at Boulder provides an excellent website for Interactive Simulations and Tutorials for Physics Education.  The PhET site boasts more than 75 million simulations that can be delivered online to teachers and students.

In my Conceptual Physics classroom I use the the tutorial simulation for Electrical Circuits.

 http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/circuit-construction-kit-ac

Demonstrating both series and parallel circuits on the SMART Board is very easy.

Students can then use tablets or clasroom computers to build their own circuits. This tutorial allows students to understand a wide variety of characteristics of circuits.  The tutorial allows students to build circuits in a variety of ways including switches, wires, batteries and and light bulbs, as well as, inductors, resistors and capacitors.

Once students complete their circuits, they can utilize a series of built in tools including current and voltage charts, ammeter, voltmeter and a stopwatch to analyze their completed circuits.

Alien Juice Bar - Acids and Bases

The Alien Juice Bar tutorial provides a simple and fun way to introduce the characteristics of Acids and Bases including the concepts of pH, pOH, neutralization.

Whether students are killing off aliens by serving them acidic or basic drinks that their constitutions cannot deal with, or they are sorting drinks by their characteristics, students can learn or review the main points of acids and bases.  This tutorial created through UC Berkeley is simplistic enough for middle school while intriguing enough to capture the attention of most high school students.

There are three parts of the tutorial. Part one allows students to learn about pH and pOH by identifying them using cabbage juice.  Phase two allows students to determine which drinks are safe to serve aliens based upon the acidic or basic composition of the monster.  Aliens die when their pH levels are altered. The third phase guides students through the neutralization of pH by mixing acids and bases.

This tutorial is best used on an interactive white board (SMART Board) to involve the entire class in the process of protecting or destroying aliens with basic acidic knowledge.

Freezeray.com - Simulations for SMART Boards

The Freezeray website provides educators with an array of very imaginative, highly impactful visual teaching-aids developed for use with SMART Boards.

The resources include tutorials and simulations in Physics, Chemistry and Biology.  These interactive activities help to make sense of some of the more challenging concepts both teachers and students encounter in science.

The Science Literacy section offers a vast array of interactive activities to increase science vocabulary skills, solidify scientific concepts and increase scientific literacy.