The Faculty of Chemical education prepared a set of educational videos showing the course
of selected experiments which constitute a multimedia instruction to those experiments. The
instructions were used in the academic Chemistry Experiment course in laboratory classes
for the students of the Faculty of Chemistry as well as by teachers in laboratory classes in
Chemical Education course in postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Chemistry UAM [Burewicz,
Jagodziński, Wolski, 2008; Jagodziński, Wolski, Piłat, Zaremba, 2009].
The discussed didactic means were prepared in order to carry out pilot research on usability
of the palmtop for chemical education related to Science experiments.
The discussed package of films for palmtop use was made in several stages. The first one
involved selecting those experiments which could later be used in the software. The second stage
involved the actual production of the multimedia instructions in a film studio. Then the sequences
(audio and video edition) were edited digitally. In the fourth stage the videos were compressed by
means of PocketDivXEncoder so that they could be viewed on a palmtop.
Finally, the package of films was copied on a SD card which was placed in a palmtop. A
multimedia player The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) was installed and thus Divx format
films could be watched Divx [Burewicz, Jagodziński, Wolski, 2005].
In the educational research students and teachers preparing for classes used the same collection
of multimedia instructions to experiments installed on the palmtop. The experiments were done
during laboratory classes when the participants were also allowed to use the instructions at any
time, e.g. while solving a laboratory problem or doing certain laboratory activities. Every week
another pair of students or teachers used the same package of instructions, however, the package
of videos in the palmtop was always the same. The researchers were afraid that the battery might
not be strong enough to last for once cycle of classes. Fortunately, it appeared that the battery
could easily last 90 minutes, which was the length of one class.
After completion of classes, a questionnaire was delivered to all of the participants so that
they could express their opinion on the work with palmtop with video instructions. Due to the
small size of the device, the researchers had expected that the video could have been not very well
visible. However, neither students nor teachers seemed to confirm that concern. Over 85% of the
participants thought that the course of the experiment shown of the screen of the palmtop was
visible enough. Moreover, they also stressed that they could operate the device intuitively and
it could be easily adapted in laboratory work. They were convinced that the use of the package
of multimedia instructions allowed them to carry out more experiments than they would have
normally done. This resulted in substantial saving of time and materials needed to execute the
experiments. Over 86% of students and teachers said that the use of mobile devices for learning,
specifically laboratory experiments in chemistry, made the process more effective. To sum up, the
participants were sure that a palmtop with the package of instructions on chemistry experiments
was very well suited as a didactic means in chemical education.
However, the interest in learning with the use of palmtop was much higher among teachers than
among students. This may be due to the fact that students had been using advanced technological
devices before and a palmtop was not really a novelty to them.
The possibility to connect to the Internet and use Flash for creating palmtop software will
definitely be widely used in future. The combination of these two technologies makes it easy to
create interactive applications for connecting with the worldwide web. A palmtop with this type
of software will allow using various packages of information necessary during laboratory classes.
It will also facilitate reporting the current level of knowledge of each student and evaluate his or
her coursework.
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