Despite the bad press the Internet is not an evil entity waiting to corrupt or destroy women and children. Rather, the Internet is a wonderful resource that has a myriad of uses, you are only limited by your own imagination.

As a high school chemistry teacher there are two main ways in which you can use the Internet in your classroom:

Personal Use

As a general resource guide I have found the following site invaluable: Internet Resources for Science and Math Education. This site provides a very long list of bookmarks, organized by subject, that may be of interest to Math and Science teachers.

If you are tired of literally cutting and pasting images from text books and photocopied pages to illustrate your handouts and other materials, you can find lots of images and graphics on the Internet, that range from whimsical images such as the Mad Scientist you see here to glassware and large complex molecules. Two sites I have found particularly useful are Clipware (a collection of glassware clipart) and Barry's Chemistry Clip Art Collection.

If you have general questions about the syllabus you are teaching or if you want the latest facts on a Chemistry related news article or if you are having difficulty explaining a particular topic to your students and would like to find an alternative explanation, there are many resources out there to help you, for example:

• The National Science Teachers Association is a great site to visit and includes a chat room where you can link up with science teachers from across the country. Here you can also find out about the latest conferences, online resources for the science teacher, how to use technology in your classroom, the list is endless, I highly recommend this site.
  
• Chemistry Education Discussion List is a very useful site where topics relevant to the Chemistry teacher are discussed. If you need answers to a specific question you may post it here and receive replies from Chemistry teachers around the world.
  
• Chemistry Teacher Resources provides lots of help in teaching General Chemistry but the one thing I particularly like about this site is that it contains a list of demonstrations that you can use to illustrate topics in your lectures. Chemistry is a very visual science and the more demonstrations you can include the better, plus students love it!!
  

As a Chemistry teacher you may also be asked to recommend a piece of software that is relevant to the material your students are studying for the schools computer lab. Many sites offer shareware chemistry software that you can preview for free prior to purchase. Two sites I have found useful for this purpose are download.com and Guide to Software.

Student Use

In a classroom where the Internet is being used there is a definite need for an Accepted Use Policy (AUP). Everyone involved with the class staff, students and parents should know what is and what is not considered acceptable use prior to the Internet being used in the classroom. This will alleviate any fears parents may have and will help avoid conflict at a later date. The AUP should apply to all users of the Internet within the school network. What is the point of having an AUP if members of staff are hypocritically acting in violation of the AUP? There are many sites on the Internet that deal specifically with the writing of AUP's for the school environment, here are two that I have found to be very informative:

• Internet Ethics Task Force
• K-12 Acceptable Use Policies

There are many ways in which the Chemistry teacher can have their students can use the Internet. Students may use the Chemistry clip art sites listed above to illustrate their projects and notebooks. You may assign a research assignment in which the students are to use the Internet to find information about a particular element or chemical. The Chemicool site provides an interactive periodic table where students can locate lots of information on a particular element. Students may also use sites such as the Lecture Help Pages, an interactive site, organized by topic (e.g. Gas Laws) where students type in the known values in a problem, submit the data and then receive the answer. This may seem like cheating but you could have students use this site to check their homework or use it to help yourself quickly work out answers on a test. Another excellent resource for chemistry students is the Ye Olde Professor's Chemistry Helper, a site that provides students with study aids, online tutorials and help solving problems.
There is also a need for us as Science teachers to become multicultural and address the contributions of the so called minorities to science. Two sites that I have found to be extremely useful are:

• African Americans in the Sciences
• Women in Chemistry

References

1. Tom O'Haver. Internet Resources for Science and Math Education. Available: http://www.inform.umd.edu/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Technology/MCTP_WWW_Bookmarks.html. 1/7/97
2. Barry W. Pase. Barry's Clip Art Server. Available: http://www.barrysclipart.com/chemistry/chemex.html. 7/8/97
3. National Science Teachers Association. Available: http://driver.nsta.org.
4. Jim Dix. Chemistry Education Discussion List. Available: http://chemed.chem.binghamton.edu:2000/digests/chemedl/chemedl.htm. 1/97.
5. James Aldridge. Chemistry Teacher Resources. Available: http://rampages.onramp.net/~jaldr/chemtchr.html. 2/8/96.
6. CNET. DOWNLOAD.COM. Available: http://download.com/. 1997.
7. General Chemistry Lessons Available: http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/software/general/genless.html.
8. Craig Fifer. Internet Ethics Task Force. Available: http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/~vste/ethics/aup/. 1996.
9. Nancy Willard. K-12 Acceptable Use Policies. Available: http://www.erehwon.com/k12aup/.
10. David Hsu . Chemicool. Available: http://the-tech.mit.edu/Chemicool/about.html.
11. G.Wiger. Lecture Help Pages. Available: http://chemistry.csudh.edu/george/lechelp/lechelp.html.
12. Dr. R. Stein. Ye Olde Professor'S Chemistry Helper. Available: http://www.gemlink.com/rstein/chemhelp.htm. 6/1/97.
13. Mitchell Brown. The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences. Available: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/. 6/13/97.
14. Women in Chemistry. Available: http://fox.nstn.ca/~cic_adm/96wmenchem.html.

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