About

XCiência. The name comes from the way the X is pronounced in Portuguese, that sounds like "cheese". In Brazil, a cheeseburger is sometimes called a XBurger. Ciência is the Portuguese word for Science. XCiência is a sandwich. You can make several kinds of sandwiches, with different kinds of bread and fillings. The secret is in the many layers. The work of a science teacher is, a lot of the time, to make choices. What to teach, how to teach, why to teach... To make good choices, we have to know many options, try them out, see what works and what fits in our teaching style and with what we believe. XCiência is a blog made to help science teachers to make their sandwich, with both variety and quality content.

Most of what we put in the sandwich is in one of the three main categories for posts: Xperimentos, XMaker and XTICs. At Xperimentos we bring ideas for practical work, specially in Chemistry. We try to bring back some of the content from our previous website, pontociência. XMaker is the category where ideas on how to use 3D printing, laser cutters and arduino boards in Chemistry teaching appear. The last category, XTICs, is where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs, or TICs in Portuguese) take the front stage. We select ideas on how to use apps, digital resources of many kinds and write about how to use them in a Chemistry classroom. 

The special sauce is a section (DigaX - say cheese!) where you can find images and pictures that can be useful for your classes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alfredo Luis Mateus is a Chemistry teacher at COLTEC / UFMG since 1999. He got a Bachelor and Master degree from the University of São Paulo. His Ph.D. was obtained from the University of Florida, in the USA.

Em 2001 publicou o livro Química na Cabeça (ed. ufmg), com experimentos simples de Química para serem feitos em casa. Em 2007, iniciou e coordenou o projeto pontociência, um portal colaborativo com roteiros de experimentos de Química, Física e Biologia. 

In 2012 Alfredo organized a book called "Chemistry Teaching mediated by ICTs", with many suggestions for teachers on the use of technology in the classroom.

Alfredo worked with science popularization in several formats - radio, video, theater, written texts and with interactive experiments in outreach events.

É professor no programa de mestrado profissional (PROMESTRE) da Faculdade de Educação da UFMG.

His last book was published with Iberê Thenório, from the YouTube channel Manual do Mundo, in 2014.