E-chemistry at school

Nowadays dynamic development of electronically supported teaching and learning methods exerts significant influence on modern teaching of chemistry. This resulted in E-chemistry: a combination of computer science and chemistry which covers many fields of knowledge, from education of chemistry and scientific information access to computer modeling of chemical compounds and reactions (Fig. 2). At present, majority of universities resigns from publication of printed materials for students and provide access to teaching materials published on-line. Current electronic systems offer a great variety of workspaces and channels to facilitate distribution of information to students, enhancement of face-to-face courses, e-books creation, preparation of teaching materials, tests and electronic exams, management of electronic lessons, or even creation of virtual chemistry laboratories. For instance, chemistry students have an on-line access to the chemical databases, publications and lots of software for chemistry. An e-learning system gives a possibility of mixing various kinds of objects such as text, images, animations, quizzes, interactive applications or links to other web sites. Furthermore, adaptive courses based on cognitive trials, learning styles, and relationships between learners can enrich each other, enabling the system to provide the learners with courses which fit their needs more accurately. There is a number of acronyms used in e-learning, often with similar meanings. Published materials and users’ activities are managed by a set of dedicated computer programs called Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). An e-learning system together with a VLE can have one of the following names: Course Management System (CMS), Learning Content Management System (LCMS), Learning Management System (LMS), Managed Learning Environment (MLE), Learning Support System (LSS) or Learning Platform (LP). E-learning systems base on a computer network and provide an on-line access to educational materials, therefore e-learning can also be called Online or Mobile Education [1]. In this paper the author shows an overview of e-learning and then a specific application of e-learning of chemistry used at the Department of Chemistry at Wrocław University of Technology [2, 3, 4], presenting some practical solutions applied