Taking a fresh look at chemistry

Miriam Tabot doesn’t have complete control over the pointer. No matter how hard she tries, the tool simply does not obey. But the 13-yearold is fully engrossed in her attempt to combine the available chlorine molecules and sodium atoms into sodium chloride. That wouldn’t be such a problem if it weren’t for the 3D pointer that keeps escaping her, but Miriam thinks it’s all cool. "This makes learning fun," she says, passing the controller to her classmate, Leon Florysiak, who immediately knows what to do. "I have a Wii console at home," he laughs and takes the 3D glasses off.

This scene isn’t taking place in a teen bedroom, but in the chemistry lab of the Elsa Brandstrom vocational high school in Essen, one of four German schools that received a Cyber Classroom station from Evonik. The 3D learning environment is intended to help students experience and understand the complexity of chemistry in theory and practice. The Cyber Classroom stations that Evonik provided to schools near its production sites include hardware and software along with several chemistry modules. The technology of the innovative 3D learning and teaching environment was developed by Visenso GmbH from Stuttgart and customized for use in schools and universities, with the explicit input of schools for the content design of the modules.

That was an important aspect for Andreas Roy-Werner, chemistry teacher and assistant principal at the Essen school. "It allows us to include our own topics in the modules," he notes. As an example, the school included a short video about burning steel wool in its laboratory into the module. In the virtual chemistry classroom, this experiment can now be shifted from the visual level to explaining molecules and theory. Even during the pilot test, the teacher found that the Cyber Classroom increased motivation and enhanced the students’ understanding of chemical processes and reactions. "This makes it easier for us to switch from the material level in the lab to the world of atoms."

Markus Langer enjoys being part of the Evonik educational sponsoring initiative to provide teachers with options for lesson planning. As the head of Corporate Marketing and PR, he sees three major goals of the initiative. "Our educational sponsorship must show that Evonik is taking its corporate citizenship responsibility seriously. At the same time, the initiative, along with all of our sponsorship activities, has to position Evonik as a creative industry group, and it has to make a positive contribution to attract qualified employees in the future to support the work of our HR team." The comprehensive approach of the Cyber Classroom meets all three of these goals for the specialty chemicals company, from preschool to graduation, and has already been used for a number of unusual projects.