{"id":14846,"date":"2013-04-24T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=14846"},"modified":"2013-04-24T08:14:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T13:14:59","slug":"apsu-professor-bob-shelton-explores-use-of-ipads-in-chemistry-classrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2013\/04\/24\/apsu-professor-bob-shelton-explores-use-of-ipads-in-chemistry-classrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU professor Bob Shelton explores use of iPads in Chemistry Classrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – For more than a century, quiet students have suffered from a common phobia known as \u201cboard shyness.\u201d They keep their eyes down and hope the teacher picks someone else to write on the board at the front of the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want students to come up to the board to work, to become more confident in their knowledge,\u201d Dr. Bob Shelton, Austin Peay State University associate professor of chemistry, said. \u201cSome suffer from board shyness. They\u2019re scared of what they\u2019re about to write. We can overcome that with some of the iPad apps that allow them to work from their seat. Then, through the technology that we have, they can project their answers so that the entire class can see it and learn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay State University associate professor of chemistry Dr. Bob Shelton.<\/p><\/div>\n

Overcoming board shyness is only one of the many advantages Shelton has discovered through his ongoing research of iPads as teaching tools. For the last two years, he has compared APSU chemistry classrooms that use tablet devices with chemistry classrooms that simply use tradition lecture practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw gains with iPads,\u201d he said. \u201cWe saw statistically significant results pointing to iPads as increasing student learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelton recently presented some of his findings at the International Conference on Chemistry Education in Rome, at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education and at the National American Chemical Society Meeting in New Orleans, LA. He hosts workshops across the country on incorporating iPads into chemistry classrooms.<\/p>\n

Shelton has also been invited to host a workshop, \u201ciPads in the Classroom,\u201d and give a keynote lecture on \u201cTeaching and Learning Chemistry\u201d at the first African Conference on Research in Chemical Education in Ethiopia this December.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe show that at worst, iPads had no effect on student learning, but in the majority of the cases, iPads helped improve student retention and student knowledge,\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n

The findings are significant because schoolrooms across the country still look very much like the classrooms the American education reformer Horace Mann championed in the 1840s and 1850s. Shelton sat at his desk inside the Sundquist Science Complex last week and demonstrated how much more dynamic a chemistry class can be with an iPad. Using an app, several circles representing atoms appeared on the iPad. The circles bounced slowly around the screen, but when Shelton pressed an arrow, causing the temperature to change, the atoms sped up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students can visualize it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an interactive experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

A grant from the APSU Office of the Provost provided funding for the 30 iPads. Shelton hopes to continue expanding his research to benefit students in classrooms across the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can increase students\u2019 enthusiasm, increase their active learning in a lecture, they\u2019re going to retain more,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to learn more. This is technology we can use to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – For more than a century, quiet students have suffered from a common phobia known as \u201cboard shyness.\u201d They keep their eyes down and hope the teacher picks someone else to write on the board at the front of the classroom. \u201cYou want students to come up to the board to work, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[15908,23,3483,10150,262,18699,11017,825,19005,4496,7467],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-3Rs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14848,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846\/revisions\/14848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}