INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR INTERFACES WITH ENEM PREPARATORY CLASSES: HOW TO TEACH CHEMISTRY IN PANDEMIC TIMES?

Technological innovation in school suggests a new way of thinking so as to combine teaching and technological advances. Great difficulty in the new digital era requires the insertion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into schools. In most cases, the challenge is to interconnect them in order to yield quality teaching and, consequently, mitigate students’ lack of interest in certain courses, mainly Chemistry. Chemistry belongs to Natural Sciences, which students have considered the most difficult contents in the Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM), the college entrance exam applied in Brazil. It was created in 1998 to evaluate students’ performance at the end of basic education in the country. Thus, this study aimed at evaluating the use of different ICTs in distance teaching as complementary tools in Chemistry teaching. The project, whose focus was Chemistry in the ENEM, was constructed together with high school seniors who attend a technical course in computer graphics at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Triângulo Mineiro (IFTM-UDICENTRO), located in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais (MG) state, Brazil. The coronavirus pandemic made it urgent to improve distance teaching, which led to big challenges and insecurity for both students and teachers. Results showed that teachers were not ready to deal with distance teaching and that they did not have enough knowledge to integrate technological resources into their classes. In short, certain tools, such as Google Classroom and Google Meet, were found to be promising alternatives to teach Chemistry, since they enabled teachers to successfully review contents aiming at the ENEM.