democratizing innovation: chemistry and pharma
to begin, a little background: dr. jean-claude bradley is a chemistry professor at drexel who is very interested in using information technology to augment his didactic efforts (podcasts, screencasts, immersive gaming environments, wikis, blogs etc). he's chronicling these adventures on his excellent blog, drexel coas e-learning.
onwards to the topic at hand: recently, dr. bradley has started the useful chemistry blog, giving his students real world problems to work so that they can apply their knowledge to tangible ends.
for example, he has procured a list of compounds (from the find-a-drug project) with possible anti-malaria and anti-hiv properties. his students have been tasked with finding the most efficient synthetic route to these target compounds, which will then be assayed for efficacy.
very interesting work...i wish i was taught chemistry in this way, and i hope that this model of distributed discovery and innovation will play a large role in improving people's lives.
2 Comments:
Jesus - thanks for the support! I was just looking at your profile and I agree that Waking Life is one of the best pieces of multimedia I have ever seen (hard to call it a movie really). Also I just saw the Johnny Cash movie "Walk the Line" - it is very well done.
you're welcome! i'll have to check out 'walk the line' when i get back to the U.S. in a couple weeks.
as a drexel alum, i'm heartened to see you advancing the field of education. i think work such as yours will help educators do more with less, and i hope that others will enthusiastically adopt and extend such practices.
incidentally, have you heard clark aldrich's talk from accelerating change 2004 on simulations and learning? i'm sure you are already familiar with his work, but it was a truly eye-opening experience for an outsider such as myself; perhaps your students might find it equally as interesting?
best regards,
jhc.
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