On-line cooperation in telematic-environments’ chemistry teaching

Abstract

ICTs and the Internet have proved to be valuable resources for Chemistry teachers because they can remove time, space and language barriers among students. Groupware tools are being used as teaching aids in some courses in several ways, such as a support for cooperative production of hypermedia (on a specific Chemistry topic) or as a repository information platforms with forum, knowledge building, and chat or negotiation capabilities included. Users of these telematic platforms get information about any event occurred inside them thanks to different user-to-user and environment-to-user communication strategies that allow sharing of information, and this promotes online cooperation among students. In this article we present some experiences, in the field of Chemistry education, using Synergeia, a free cooperative environment, used sometimes in conjunction with Moodle, an open source e-learning platform.