Grade or blog...grade or blog...grade or blog? Who am I kidding? Of course it will be blog. Like many of you, I greet the end of the academic year with some major mixed emotions. I feel joy about the upcoming summer of research with students, pride in my students’ successes, and delight in the chance to work at a slightly less crazy pace. On the other hand, I feel sadness about the students who will be leaving, and I feel surprisingly strong regret about what I could have done better in the classroom. After all these years you’d think that I would be past that. Evidently not.

So in an attempt not to wallow, I’ll share some of the positive contributions that VIPEr made to my teaching this semester. I usually start my inorganic course with one of the “first day of class” activities, but our first day of class this semester was a snow day! Nonetheless, I usually do some version of the Inorganic Chemistry Table of Contents activities by Sheila Smith or Barb Reisner. That’s followed by an activity that I developed that helps students dredge up their prior knowledge of atomic orbitals.

As we move into Lewis structures, VIPEr has a lot of cool examples of using Lewis structures to understand molecules in the recent literature. See, for example, the learning objects on polyazides, boron-boron multiple bonds, or the tricky nitryl fluoride. And of course there has to be at least one xenon compound in the mix!

Next we move on to symmetry and point groups. There are again a lot of good examples from the recent literature. I’ve collected some of these into a “VIPEr collection” on symmetry, group theory, and computational chemistry.

And rounding out the first few weeks of class are two of my favorite activities that get students up and moving: Athletic Periodic Trends Review and the Symmetry Scavenger Hunt.

A little blogging therapy seems to be doing the trick. I feel better already after remembering these great activities. I’ll save the rest of my favorite learning objects for a future post!