Chemical Education Journal (CEJ), Vol. 4, No. 1 /Registration
No. 4-1/Received March 26, 2000.
URL = http://www.juen.ac.jp/scien/cssj/cejrnlE.html
E-mail: cymou@ms.cc.ntu.edu.tw
As Asia enters the 21st century, attracting and preparing young professionals entering chemistry and related technology fields is of priority concern. How shall we educate the future leaders in chemistry? How shall we prepare students in all scientific and technological fields to appreciate and use chemistry? As the frontiers of chemistry have undergone rapid changes in recent years, both in academic research and in industrial developments, innovations in chemical education are increasingly important.
The 8th Asian Chemical Congress (8ACC) was met in Taipei on November 21-24, 1999. The Chemical Education Symposium in 8ACC was organized by Prof. Y. Takeuchi and me. During the 1999 IUPAC(August 20) general assembly, Prof. Takeuchi, Prof. M. Ito and me met in Berlin. We discussed many things about the organization of the 8ACC. I thank them for the selfless organization effort. I want to thank my colleagues in the chemical education committee of the Chinese Chemical Society of Taipei for helping the organization, Prof. Jwu-ting Chen, Prof. Tai-Shan Fang in particular. I want also thank Prof. R. Bucat for helping me in suggesting the possible contributors.
There are three parts in the Chemical Education Symposium: the oral lectures, a poster presentations, and a special event- a panel discussion session on Internet and Chemistry . Professor Masato Ito of Soka University was the chairman of the session.
During the symposium, Prof. Ito told me that the Chemical Education Journal would like to invite the contributors of the symposium to have their papers published as a Proceedings in the electronic form. Prof. Morikawa (Joetsu University of Education) the Editor-in-Chief of the Chemical Education Journal (CEJ) kindly noticed the acceptance for electronic publication as a Special Issue of the CEJ. I am delighted to take opportunity to introduce to you the program and the contributions. Chemical education in Asia in the past has been pretty much organized as national education programs. The educators are isolated from each others. We lack a place to share our outlook and efforts. Now there are two factors making the situation changing. One is the regional chemical congress such as Asian Chemical Congress meeting. Chemists from Asian countries can meet and discuss. The other is the rapid proliferation of Internet connections. We are much more in contact with each others. I hope such contact will grow and we will meet more in the future.
The programs for chemical education in 8ACC are as follows:
Robert Bucat, University of Western Australia, Australia.
"Pedagogical content knowledge:Teaching according to the
content-specific demands of learning"
Chung-Yuan Mou, National Taiwan University, Taipei.
"Innovation of University Chemistry Programs; An Increasingly
Critical Issue in Taiwan"
Haruo Hosoya, Ochanomizu University, Japan.
"Growing Importance of Science Teachers in Primary and
Secondary Education"
There are six other oral presentations selected from the submissions. There are about fifty people attending the lectures. It should be noted that the second lecture was planned originally to be given by Prof. Pi-Tai Chou of Chung-Chen University, Cia-Yi. Unfortunately, just before the congress a strong earthquake hitted central Taiwan and destroyed Prof. Chou s laboratory. His computer file and laboratory equipments were lost in a fire. The organizer, Prof. Chung-Yuan Mou, has to substitute himself giving the same titled talk in the last minute.
Professor Tai-Shan Fang of National Normal University was responsible for helping the poster session which was held with other posters at the same time.
The development of the Internet have changed the way of communication on the world-wide basis. This also holds in the field of chemistry and chemical education. The world-wide web sites with a wide variety of data serves as a data source for learning and research. In addition, with the help of cgi, java, and various add-in utilities, it is now expected to work as a tool for self-learning and distant education. Many attempts have been made, and much more is planned and in preparation. I thank Professor Masato Ito for his tireless organization of this special event. He has put a special website at the Asian chemical Education network for interested party to held a virtual conference before the meeting. The session was attended by about forty people and the presentations are given by,
Prof. Hsin-Tien Chiu (National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan)
Dr. Hiroshi Yosihda (Hiroshima University, Japan)
Prof. Robert F. Toia (University of San Francisco, San Francisco,USA
)
Professor Yoshito Takeuchi ( Kanagawa University, Japan)
There were extensive discussion on the use of Internet in database, distant education, and scientific publication.
Although not all the contributions in the symposium are presented on the Chemical Education Journal, but we do hope that with this effort the chemical education in Asia will become more interconnected.
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