ChemSketch Demo

Here is a 3 minute Flash screencast that Yana made to help with the use of ChemSketch in your blog assignment. If you know how to do something well please consider doing a brief screencast like this. You can download Camtasia here.

Even if something seems simple to you, it may not be for everyone. A good way to know if a screencast it useful is to notice recurring errors made by student in their blog assignment.

Examples:
-how to find a reaction in the literature
-how to use CiteULike
-how to post to Blogger
-how to resize pictures
-how to link to a reference without pasting the entire url in the post text
-how to tell if a reference is suitable
etc.

Second deadline over

All of the grades for the second blog assignment deadline are now posted and cannot be changed. A few comments:
1) Most of you are now using CiteULike properly so there are now plenty of examples other students can look at to see how it should be done.
2) It would be nice if you could tag all your articles with "orgo" so that all the articles of the class could be tracked with an RSS feed.
3) Many of you are giving a lot more than what I am asking for an running into some trouble in the process. All I want is one single reaction with nice readable molecules drawn from ChemSketch (or by hand as a last resort) with an arrow and reagent on the arrow. It will be easiest for you to pick a reaction that we covered in class because you won't have to explain it in as much detail.
4) If you want to give me more information that is fine but make sure that you support your statements with a link to a document with primary data (like experimental results) or to a document where the information trail continues on to primary data. For example, "progesterone reduces the risk of cancer" should be clickable to an article where the actual study has this as a conclusion OR to an article that has a similar statement with a link to primary data. References lumped at the end of your post are not good enough. Articles that you link to with general references at the bottom are also not usable. Unfortunately this means that a lot of government public health sites or company websites are not suitable for references. Your opinions and your speculations don't have to be supported by a reference. Try to post well before the next deadline so I can help you get this right.

Chap 9 UT map ready for testing

We have quiz 9 in Unreal Tournament 2004 map format available for testing. If you have UT2004 just download the map and textures here.

I'll make these maps available on the network shortly but for now you have to download and play on your computer.

You can play with or without bots (or other players). So if you just want to calmly explore select no bots and don't play on the network.

If you don't have UT2004 but still want to play let me know and we can make arrangements.

Please report any errors or problems as comments on the Edufrag blog on the post of the map you are playing.

This is an example of a student assignment done as a map instead of a blog post.

First deadline grades

The first deadline for the blog assignment has now past. Everyone who posted has been graded. There is nothing you can now do to improve your grade on the first assignment. Learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of other students by reading my comments on all the posts to make the next deadline in 2 weeks.

One general comment: use a specific reaction of a specific compound that you find in the article. Avoid drawing general structure with R groups.

repeating mistakes

Before you post take a look at the comments I made on all of the other students' posts. I see the same errors coming up in the last few posts. In order to get full marks you must:
1) make sure your molecules and reagents are big enough to view easily from http://chem242.blogspot.com. See the first few examples that I graded "full marks" to see how big is big enough
2) you must use CiteULike
3) ALL of the reference info needs to be present in CiteULike (authors, journal name, year, page, volume, title, abstract)
4) the single step reaction that you have in your scheme MUST be in the article you are citing

I will shortly stop giving this feedback repeatedly and just grade it accordingly at each deadline.

If any student has tips (especially for making molecules the proper size in Chemsketch) it would be great if you could record a 1-2 minute screencast of it. Just download the trial version of Camtasia, save as an avi and I'll give you instructions to upload.

Tutoring

The Drexel Learning Center is offering tutoring for organic chemistry students this term. If you find this to be useful share your experience here.

More blog assignment info

1) For a reminder of how to use Chemsketch, Flickr and Blogger to do your assignment review this tutorial. There seems to be a problem with the ChemSketch version on the Drexel server so use the link to the free version of ChemSketch in that post.

2) You may not copy reactions or text from articles.

3) Pick one simple reaction that we covered and only draw that.

4) You may use ChemSketch or drawing on a tablet PC or drawing on paper and scanning the reaction if you have to but in the long run ChemSketch will come in very handy so might as well learn it now.

5) After uploading make sure that the pic is not too wide, as it will distort the right hand frame of the blog.

EduFrag blog

As I mentioned previously, you may submit your blog assignment as an Unreal Tournament map. A blog for information about this has been created. Subscribe to the feed if you want to keep on top of this project, either as a map developer or a player.