Professor Mark Lorch M.Lorch@hull.ac.uk
Professor of Public Engagement and Science Communication.
Professor Mark Lorch M.Lorch@hull.ac.uk
Professor of Public Engagement and Science Communication.
Molcraft, will use the popular computer game Minecraft as a tool for visualising and exploring chemical and protein structures. The project will develop a 'world' populated with key structures, functional groups and molecules of interest. The world will also contain lessons, quizzes and in game supporting information. Further (out-of-game) supporting material will allow teachers (and students) to construct their own Molcraft worlds, introduce their own quizzes and in-game assignments. The Molcraft world will be made freely available to download and install within Minecraft. It will also be provided as a server allowing schools and other visitors to log into the world without having to download any additional material. The computer game, Minecraft, is frequently used as an educational aid. Minecraft EDU has been designed with the specific aim to support the use of the game in education. For example, every secondary school in Ireland now has licenses to run this education version of Minecraft. Teachers and pupils alike have made use of its flexibility to explore historical buildings, drill down through the strata of the UK or collaborate on building projects within virtual teaching environments. A key concept in chemistry is 3d configurations of molecules and the structures of functional groups. These are fundamental points in Alevel curricula. However they can easily be approached much earlier in science education (even at primary school) with the aid of models and visualisation software. Existing resources are not designed with school children in mind, so it it difficult for teachers to access appropriate software, and molecular modelling kits are too expensive for many schools to purchase in any number. Through the use of the Molcraft we will introduce a free, flexible, facility for anyone versed in the use of Minecraft to explore chemical structures. This will be supported with online and in-game resources. These resources will be expanded over time, with the help of the Minecraft community. A server will host the Molcraft world, allowing anyone to access it. Teachers will be allowed to register as editors of the world and so contribute their own material to it. In this way we will establish a growing resource of chemistry related material embedded within a widely accessed game.
Type of Project | Project |
---|---|
Status | Project Complete |
Funder(s) | Royal Society of Chemistry |
Value | £2,730.00 |
Project Dates | Jul 1, 2015 - Dec 31, 2016 |
Hit or Myth Sep 1, 2016 - Jul 1, 2017
Hit or Myth aims to tests life-hacks which are strongly rooted in chemistry. Life-hacks offer techniques and tips which improve time management and make our lives generally more efficient. The Internet is full of these hints, but how do we know which...
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Interreg - Sullied Sediments Jan 1, 2017 - Dec 31, 2020
Our inland waterway ecosystems provide a circulatory system for both our urban and rural communities: a transport system bringing goods and removing waste; while in parallel also providing ‘oxygen’ promoting health of the wildlife and humans, whether...
Read More about Interreg - Sullied Sediments.
RSC COVID-19 Head of Department Grant Jun 1, 2020 - Jul 31, 2024
£10,000 of funding broadly for research enablement and researcher development in the chemical sciences in 2020. It should not replace or reduce institutional or funding agency support for departments.
Heads of Department may allo...
Read More about RSC COVID-19 Head of Department Grant.
1-2-1 Academically asymmetrical paired mentoring: Improving GCSE science attainment amongst disadvantaged students Jan 1, 2021 - Jul 31, 2022
A previous RCT pilot study (Sharpe, Abrahams & Fotou, 2017) found that academically asymmetrical paired mentoring intervention (the one-to-one pairing of undergraduate STEM students with disadvantaged Year 11 students) had a statistically significant...
Read More about 1-2-1 Academically asymmetrical paired mentoring: Improving GCSE science attainment amongst disadvantaged students.
About Repository@Hull
Administrator e-mail: repository@hull.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
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