Teaching College Math Technology Blog

Worms do calculus?

2008-07-24T10:25:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Julie for passing along this great example of calculus in nature. Apparently, roundworms calculate how much the strength of different tastes is changing and stay the course or change paths depending on their calculations.

Here's the link. Enjoy!

Jing is here to stay!

2008-07-22T13:15:00.002-04:00

For students to share handwritten work or equations online, there is one program that has changed my online classes more than any other, and that is a free program called Jing built by TechSmith.

However, when I show other instructors how to use Jing, the one concern that always arises is "what if Jing starts to cost something?"

My response has always been 1) TechSmith wouldn't change the price (free) without significant notice, and 2) Jing will always be free for a certain amount of space.

Today, Techsmith announced that Jing is now an official offering and, to celebrate the 1-year birthday of Jing, they are increasing the amount of free space on Screencast from 200 MB to 2 GB. That's right ... 2 GB of storage space (and 2 GB of transfer bandwidth)!!!

This is really fantastic news - some of my students were hitting the 200 MB ceiling on this. So, whether it's an existing account or a brand new Jing account, you should have a lot more space to save your screen captures and videos!

Acting out Related Rates

2008-07-22T12:46:00.004-04:00

For better or for worse, here are my summer calculus student's theatrical interpretations of related rates problems:

Filling a cylinder (starring Brent)
Moving Spotlight (starring Lance)
Runner on a Baseball Diamond (starring Ashley and Jason)
Falling Ladder (starring Ryan)
Moving cars or octopii (starring Sam)
Stone thrown in a Lake (starring Scott)
The kite (or flying pig) problem (starring Peter and Dan)
Reeling in a Fish (starring Joe)

The TV Production department at my college helped a couple of the students (recording and producing the videos in a YouTube-compatible format). The rest of the students recorded, produced, and uploaded their videos to YouTube or Screencast on their own.

Explosion of Online Math Videos and General Unease

2008-07-21T16:00:00.006-04:00

It is with a little bit of unease that I've been looking around the Internet at what is available as far as math videos go. I asked my calculus students to consider making a video setting up a related rates problem for extra credit. When I went to look at their videos on YouTube, I was amazed at the number of problems that have been worked out in videos. If you want to see what I mean, look at any of the following sites:

YouTube (search "Calculus)

Hippocampus (which even has Calculus in Spanish)

MathTV (many of these videos are cross-posted on YouTube)

MIT Open Courseware (some of these have videos)

Video Calculus (University of Houston)

Free Video Lectures

I'm guessing that between video solutions and solutions worked out on websites, you could find a worked out solution on the Internet to any related rates problem (or other problem) that could be assigned.

This brings me to a question ... if information is becoming so easily available for free (and it is), is there any way that, in good conscience, you could evaluate a student's mathematical learning without having the student show up to take a proctored exam in person. Students can get the "work" from a variety of websites on the Internet, so even if they don't have a friend willing to do the work for them, it should be easy enough to do any kind of take-home test by simply searching the net for solutions.

In a writing-intensive class (English or History, perhaps), you would be able to evaluate authenticity of the work of the student by examining a series of drafts that lead to a final paper or because the personality of the student comes out in the work. However, for mathematics, the work for different students looks pretty much the same (assuming it is correct). There would be no way to determine that the student actually learned the material themselves.

Now, you might say ... easy enough ... just write all new test problems every semester! Have you ever tried to write new related rates problems that are doable at a Calc I level?

(I should mention that what really made me uneasy was the calculus videos involving bikini-clad girls. Some really smart, good-looking guy or gal could make a lot of money online by stripping to almost nothing and producing math lessons to post online. This is probably the only way anyone will ever profit off of making video math content in the future.)

Why the unease? The 2005 CBMS Survey found that "the predominant instructional modality continued to be the standard lecture method, with this reported as the preferred methodology for all but two courses by percentages that ranged as high as 93%."

Well, if all you do in the math classroom is lecture , and lectures are now readily available online for free, then what will your role be in the higher education classroom of the future? I'd be moving towards more active classroom learning if I were a math instructor at the college level. Oh yeah, I am, and I have ... phew! Dodged that bullet!

Seriously though, if a student were to learn all their calculus by watching videos, do our colleges have the ability to award these credits towards a degree through some kind of evaluation (like the AP exam)? How about for differential equations? How about Abstract Algebra? As college tuition (and gas) becomes more and more expensive, students (and parents) will be questioning why it is that students need to physically appear in a classroom and pay for tuition to do something that they could do on their home computer (i.e. watch a lecture).

It's interesting that I'm thinking about such issues this week, as I am going to the Education Summit (and the rest of the conference, with lots of sessions on Learning and Education) at the WorldFuture Conference in Washington DC this weekend. I'm curious whether these other thinkers about education and the future have basically come to the same conclusion as I have:

If all you do in the classroom is lecture, you're in trouble in the higher education environment of the future. Instructors will continue to work at colleges as facilitators of learning, but the learning will take a variety of forms. There's more to learning than passively watching a lecture, and it's about time we figure that out. If you're within five years of retirement, you're probably going to be okay. Any more than that and it would be wise to begin to learn alternative pedagogies to math lectures.

When did you first begin teaching?

2008-07-20T19:09:00.003-04:00

I was looking through old pictures this weekend and I found this one. I am almost 4 years old in this picture.

Is EASY captioning around the corner?

2008-07-15T14:21:00.006-04:00

I just read on Google Blogoscoped that in some circumstances, you can now search the audio of selected videos loaded into Google Video. In particular, you can search election speeches of the candidates for specific words (try it out here). Every time there is a "hit" in the video for your keyword, a yellow mark appears on the video timeline.

I did a search for the keyword "math" in the video collection. When you hover your mouse over the yellow mark, you see the text of the speech at that moment.

One can only assume that Google has processed the audio through a speech-to-text program and are actually searching the transcript of the videos for the keywords you choose. As a side benefit, wouldn't it be cool if one of my students could search my collection of videos for a key phrase, like "logarithmic differentiation" and see every instance of it?

I think this means that Google is pretty darn close to being able to automatically caption videos. If nothing else, hopefully this means that cheap captioning services are just around the corner.

If putting your video lessons on Google Video or Youtube meant they were captioned, would you do it? Release your content to the world?

Sporadic Posting

2008-07-14T10:51:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the sporadic posting the last few weeks. I am in a summer blog funk. It's not that I don't have anything to post about - perhaps the problem is that I have too much to post about and not enough time. Here are my excuses for not blogging regularly:

Calculus students (four sections of calculus is probably too much for one instructor in a 10-week summer semester)
Blackboard 8 issues (an annoying new gradebook, slow Java loading, and glitches that require you to use HTML instead of a WYSIWYG editor)
Moving my office (finally my own office space, but it takes some work - see blog post here)
Watching Season 4 of LOST (which I completely missed during the regular school year) and Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica
Trying to learn Dreamweaver, Flash, and Blender
Writing grants
Nice weather

I will be going to three conferences in a few weeks: World Futures (DC), MathFest (Madison), and Distance Teaching & Learning (Madison). These should all be interesting (in different ways) and I will be blogging from the conferences.

My posting will continue to be sporadic until the semester is over. If you're still visiting this blog by a bookmark, you may just want to subscribe via a blog reader or email (see the right-hand side of the blog for information).

iSpring Giveaway

2008-07-09T19:49:00.003-04:00

Someone passed this along to me, and it looks like a good opportunity to get a free copy of useful eLearning software.

Of course, this is only going to benefit you if you read this blog post in the next seven hours or so ...

Go to GiveAwayoftheDay and you can download iSpring Pro 3.5 for the PC. This software is a 3rd-party add-on to PowerPoint. You can use it to publish PowerPoint files as Flash files (swf format) and load the files into an LMS (like Blackboard).

Please note, you must downloand and activate the software today, July 9 to get it for free.

PDF Wish List

2008-07-09T13:20:00.003-04:00

I am reading and trying to organize about 200 papers as part of my dissertation research. I have almost all of them as PDF files, and I would not be printing them, except that I need to be able to annotate them easily and the Adobe Acrobat software is not really ideal.

I've been looking for a way to store all the PDF files for the papers on the Internet and annotate them while the papers are online. Then, from any location (school, home, a conference, or wherever) I could log in, and continue reading where I left off. If I had the ability to add keywords, notes, and a citation in addition to basic annotation tools (pen tools, highlighting tools, etc) then that would be perfect.

My search has yielded several "almosts" but no homerun.

Screencast - I can upload PDF files here, and save keywords and descriptions with the files, but they can't be annotated without downloading the files (and then reuploading the files). Can't we just add the SnagIt tools to Screencast?

PDF Hammer - I can upload PDF files here, and it's a really nice interface, but there is no ability to annotate the files with highlighting or handwritten notes while they are online. You can "upgrade" to the professional version (called nitro), but as far as I can tell, you still have to edit the files offline and then reupload them.

Adobe Acrobat - My recent experience is with Acrobat 8 (9 just came out). Acrobat can do the annotation of pdf files, but the tools are clunky and its all offline - I like the tools on Windows Journal a lot better for annotation (it's what I use in class with my tablet). Why can't I do all of this on the web?

Windows Journal - great annotation tools, but it's not online, it's not cross-platform, and it doesn't print to PDF properly (see previous post).

If we had my wished-for online PDF editor, we could also post a PDF version of a paper and have all of the students make notes and annotate it as they read it. Students would benefit from seeing each other's comments and learn from each other's note-taking habits.

Know of something that satisfies all the requirements?
1. Highlighting tools
2. Hand-written notes (from tablet input)
3. PDF files
4. Keywords
5. Text-based notes
6. Space for citation
7. Folders to organize files in
8. All of this is accessed online without downloading the document

Please let me know!

My Trilogy: Activities for Algebra

2008-07-04T16:59:00.005-04:00

The workbooks are all done - three workbooks of activities and assessments for the algebra classroom. The activities (designed as puzzles and games mostly) are designed to replace lecture with more active classroom learning. The puzzles tease out similarities and differences between concepts within the chapters, and span the ideas that run throughout algebra. The assessments are topic specific - I grow weary of the CATs which don't seem to be particularly applicable to math classes (although I do use the muddiest point one in my online courses sometimes).

Although the workbooks are written to accompany the Tussy/Gustafson Algebra series, I don't see any compelling reason why you couldn't use them with any algebra course. Just find the Table of Contents that most closely matches your course. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages of activities. No kidding. I can't believe how many hundreds of activities there turned out to be living in my head.

You can view (and use) some sample activities and assessments here. More about the Tussy/Gustafson Algebra series is here. The publisher is Cengage Learning.

Beginning Algebra: ISBN-13: 978-0-495-55468-4

Intermediate Algebra: ISBN-13: 978-0-495-55459-6

Beg & Int Algebra: ISBN-13: 978-0-495-55478-3

What's the deal with LinkedIn anyways?

2008-07-02T14:54:00.001-04:00

Some of you may have received invitations to linked in, or maybe even accepted invitations. Do you really understand what LinkedIn does?

Here's a CommonCraft video on ... LinkedIn!

Removing Background Noise in Camtasia

2008-06-27T14:24:00.003-04:00

If you use Camtasia, you probably know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that you can adjust the audio in recorded videos. I've known it for months, but haven't actually messed around with it until I needed to reproduce a whole bunch of videos to be more compatible with Flash 9.

As I listened to some of my old videos, watching my learning about video recording progress in accelerated time as my videos progressed through the semester. During this reproduction process, I discovered that the audio level and quality varied greatly in the lessons. Some were recorded at home on my porch, some in hotels with loud air conditioners, etc. When I hit a particularly bad one (click here if you really want to hear it), I decided that the time had come to learn how to remove those background noises.

It's actually pretty easy. Here's my tutorial. And here's the Techsmith Learning Center page for this topic.

Sneaking Equations into Gmail

2008-06-27T08:03:00.012-04:00

Here's one I've been meaning to post for a while. Last month I figured out how to sneak equations into the text of email messages in gmail. It's not ideal - ideal would be an equation editor built in to Gmail, but it does work and I've verified that the equations show up as intended on the receiving end of the emails in various programs (Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.).

Here's the principle: You know how companies are able to send you email that has lots of pictures and clickable text - just like a webpage? This is HTML-based email, and you can create it too using Google Page Creator as your editor.

If you already have a gmail account, you can use Google Page Creator to do the same things that these companies do when they build active HTML pages for email.

Create your equations with an equation editor (like MathType) and then use a screen-capture program (like Snagit or Jing) to create small image files of the equations you want in your email. Remember where you save the images, because you will have to find them again!

In Google Page Creator, create what you'd like to have in the email. One way to do it is to write the text in Page Creator and insert the images between the text lines.

A more efficient way to do it would be to write the text and equations in your equation editor, and insert the whole thing as an image in Page Creator.

When your document looks as you desire, copy the material in Google Page Creator, then paste the material (Ctrl-V) into a new email in Gmail. It should appear in the email exactly as it appeared on the page in Google Page Creator.

The reason this works (I think) is that both editors are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors built by Google and they are both writing the same back-end HTML code for everything you create.

Google Page Creator hosts the image files on the google servers, even if you never publish the web page. However, you can't delete the images out of Google Page Creator, or they will disappear from the emails. I just have an unpublished page in Page Creator called "Sneaking Equations into Gmail" and I just keep adding new material to at the top.

Like I said at the beginning, it's not ideal. Google should either build an equation editor that is compatible with all of its applications or integrate an existing equation editor into its applications. Google searching is optimized by mathematicians ... you'd think that they'd be all over this!

Wii Have Liftoff!

2008-06-24T23:31:00.006-04:00

I've been working on this Wii Smartboard hack project for about two weeks and today I'm pleased to report that I finally have liftoff !

What is it? Johnny Lee (who presented at TED 2007) has been doing some fascinating work with simple Wii remotes. One of his projects, shown below, has been to make a "hack" version of a SmartBoard using a wii remote, an infrared light, and a bluetooth capable computer.

It's been blogged about all over the Internet, and several of you have urged me to write about it, but I wanted to try it myself before passing it along. So ... here are the gory details (more lucid details, without all the embellishment, can be found on Johnny Lee's website. It is the project called Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards Using the Wiimote.

STEP 1: Build an infrared light pen and borrow someone's wii remote. I did purchase the parts from Radio Shack for under $10: an infrared light, a switch, some wire, and a AA battery. For the pen construction (which was going to possibly require some sautering), I enlisted the Industrial Technology Wing of our campus for some help. One of their students did a fabulous job disassembling a standard whiteboard marker to create our working infrared pen. When you press and hold the switch, the infrared light is on. In our model, the battery is housed in the tail end, which makes it relatively simple to replace (by removing the duct tape). The infrared light is glued into the tip to hold it steady.

STEP 2: Find a computer that has bluetooth that can be hooked up to a projector of some sort. This actually turned out to be one stumbling block. It turns out that not a single classroom computer on our campus is bluetooth enabled. This left us scrounging for laptops (or my tablet PC), which kind of defeats the purpose of installing the system in a classroom, but for the purposes of trying the technology, it was fine.

STEP 3: Get the computer to detect the Wii Remote. This was the hardest step. I spent hours trying to get my tablet to pair with the Wii Remote. I still have not gotten my tablet to "synch" with the remote. It would detect the existence of the Wii Remote, but it would not pair. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I am running Windows XP Tablet, and not a standard version of Windows XP or Vista. The tablet keeps insisting that I give a code for the Wii Remote before it will pair. This evening, my assistant Jill volunteered her laptop for the experiment and we used her Bluetooth (for the first time ever) to successfully perform the synch. So that's one good thing I can say about Windows Vista. Where I spent hours not getting XP to synch properly, Vista managed it in under a minute.

STEP 4: Download Johnny Lee's Wiimote Whiteboard software (found on his website). You can't even run the software until you get the Wii synched, so don't bother trying.

STEP 5: With the computer projecting, and the camera part of the wii pointing at the projected space (mirroring the computer screen), run the Wiimote Whiteboard software and calibrate the pen to the space. If the pen does not seem to be seen, you will have to keep adjusting the wii camera and starting from scratch until all four calibration points are easily seen by the wii remote.

This is Jill demonstrating our successful launch of the Wii Smartboard Hack.

Now, you're going to ask, how does it work? Well, we still don't have it set up properly. We need to play with the angle of the Wii remote camera, but Jill's laptop ran out of power before we got a chance. You can see that the writing we've got on the board in this calibration is somewhat "blocky" but it was smoother in a previous (not pictured) calibration.

I guess all I can say, at this point, is that I can verify the technology works. So we have, at least, accomplished that much. Ideally, I would affix the wii remote semi-permanently to the ceiling projector apparatus so that it couldn't be bumped during use, but I promised to return the wii remote (unharmed) to the owner.

So, we'll update you again when we have power for Jill's laptop and some time to work on our calibration issue. In the meantime, start thinking about what we might be able to do with a "smart" table with four seats and four infrared pens!

TED Talks for STEM

2008-06-23T22:26:00.002-04:00

In Academe, we tend to think of scholarly journal publications as "the gold standard." I'm here to argue that in the Digital Age, there is a new gold standard for disseminating findings, and it is way more than publishing in a joural and then reading your paper at a conference.

Easy-to-understand video explaining your scholarly work for a more general audience is the new standard, and TED (Technology, Education, and Design) is the gold standard of that work. If you haven't ever seen TED Talks, you need to go out and do a little sampling.

TED is an absolutely stunning conference which puts the word "interdisciplinary" as we know it in Academe, to shame. Here is a small collection of some of my favorites in the STEM fields. My advice? Give up television for a few weeks and explore the TED collection instead. You will gain a radical new understanding of the world of technology that we (academics and the rest of the population) are about to enter.

David Bolinsky Animates a Cell (Biology, Medicine, Animation, Chemistry - TED 2007, released 2007)

Blaise Aquera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth Demo (Computer Science, Mathematics, Social Networks, Photography)

Robert Full: How Engineers Learn from Evolution (Engineering, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Physiology - TED 2002, released 2008)

Jonathan Harris: The Web's Secret Stories (Social Networks, Computer Science, Art, Behavioral Science)

George Dyson: The Birth of the Computer (Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, History - TED 2003, released 2008)

Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight (Biology, Physiology, Neurology, Spirituality - TED 2008, released 2008)

Arthur Ganson: Sculpture that's truly moving (Engineering, Physics, Art, Design, Graphic Design - TED 2004, released 2008)

Brian Cox: An Inside Tour of the World's Biggest Supercollider (Physics, Engineering - TED 2008, released 2008)

Will Wright: Toys that make Worlds (Biology, Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics, Behavioral Science, Computer Science, Geology - TED 2007, released 2007)

Enjoy!

Improving Technology Expertise in Math

2008-06-18T09:16:00.002-04:00

It's been a great week so far. I've had some amazing conversations with a truly A-list of researchers who are concerned about STEM education in the United States.

I've met Mary Ellen Weimer, Carl Wieman, Sheila Tobias, Deborah Hughes-Hallet, Jach Hehn, Noshir Contractor, and many others. I think, as it turns out, my role here is twofold: 1. To see that community college faculty development is advocated for in the converstation. 2. To have the opportunity to champion my cause, technology training for faculty, to people who have the ability to help it be supported.

I thought I would share my poster with you, on Improving Technology Experties in Mathematics Instructors. It is an initial, quick, swipe at the data from the workshop last month. I am hoping to write a paper about the workshop and results, but this is what I have for now.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by wyandersen

A Glimpse of the Future of Education?

2008-06-15T13:13:00.004-04:00

Look closely at these three guys sharing the stage. Only one of them is actually there in the flesh. All three men see each other as if they were on stage together. They see the sweat on each other's faces, the gestures they make, and whether they are smiling or look serious.

The two guys on the right are holograms. Beamed in live for a Cisco Systems event. The technology is called TelePresence. It was a collaboration between Cisco Systems and Musion. The in-the-flesh guy on stage is Cisco CEO John Chambers, on a stage in Bangalore. The other two guys are actually in San Jose, California, but they sure as heck look like they are talking on a stage in Bangalore. Did I mention that this was all done live? Not prerecorded? And that it was telecast live too? You can watch the recording of the live event at by visiting the Cisco On-Stage TelePresence site.

So, let's say this technology takes a year to get perfected and three years to sink in to the business world. That means, that about 4-5 years from now, conference speakers might be able to beam themselves in for a live presentation at a conference center near you.

Once the technology infiltrates educational conferences, then we will start to see it show up on campuses in a limited experimental form for early adapters. Give it another 5 years to truly become affordable enough for the average household to begin adopting it (as their HDTV becomes out of date and holographic projection becomes all the rage).

What does this timeline mean? Ten years from now, we could be teaching as holograms in someone's household. When we look out at our classes, some students might be there in the flesh and some might just be holograms.

What an incredible time we live in. Science fiction is becoming reality. I don't think I can end this post without saying, Beam me up, Scotty!

This Blog is About to Experience Technical Difficulties

2008-06-14T18:24:00.003-04:00

When I switched over to Linux hosting, all the links from my blog to my website broke because of capital letters used in file names (Linux based hosting is case-sensitive but Windows-based hosting was not).

I've fixed about half the links, but I am about to "re-break" all of them in order to reorganize the Teaching College Math Website (www.teachingcollegemath.com).

In addition, I'm trying to redirect this blog to the domain: http://blog.teachingcollegemath.com.

I've been having trouble with educational institutions blocking any email with the word "blogspot" in it (eyeroll).

Hopefully, this means nothing for any of you except that you might encounter a few broken links for the next few days until my assistant gets them all cleaned up.

Word to the wise ... never put spaces or capital letters in any of your file names if these files are eventually destined for the web. Use underscores instead of spaces. Trust me ... I'm learning the hard way!

There are a whole lot of tech projects that I've been working on that I haven't had time to post yet. Here's a preview of my coming attractions:

Getting equations into gmail
Making accessible math pdf documents
The SmartBoard Wii Hack (build a $50 SmartBoard ... does anyone out there have any expertise on getting a Wii remote to pair with a tablet??? If so, please email!)
A fix for the Windows Journal filesharing problem (if you have SnagIt)

Next week I'll be at a special invitation-only NSF-sponsored conference called Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM. Check out the guest list! I have a sub for all my classes (including the online classes), but I don't think I'll be blogging much. This is why I'm breaking my blog this weekend.

I've got four posts lined up for next week on Busyness Girl about my recent trip last weekend to Washington, D.C. If you're going to AMATYC in November, you might check these out for a preview of what you might want to do in D.C.

Math Girl

2008-06-12T22:52:00.004-04:00

One of the participants in our recent Math & Technology Workshop had never used YouTube before, and on her first go at it, she discovered Math Girl!

Episode I: Differentials Attract (Linear Approximations in Calculus)

Episode II: Zero!'s Dis-Continuity (Discontinuities in Calculus)

Episode III: Rationalize This (in any discussion of rational and irrational numbers)

Who says there's nothing good on YouTube?

Sharing Windows Journal Files

2008-06-10T13:42:00.007-04:00

This is the first semester that I've offered to post the notes from class on the Blackboard course site. I've been writing the notes in Windows Journal, and I knew there was a "Windows Journal Viewer" but I didn't realize how difficult it was to obtain the viewer. You have to have a copy of Windows on your computer and validate it to get the viewer software. Of course, that's not going to help non-Windows users at all, plus it's a bit much to put students through.

So, my first attempt at an alternate format was to print the Journal files to PDF. Above is the original first page of the file and below is the PDF ... see the problem? (plus, it prints to pdf 90 degrees rotated)

Someone suggested that I try printing as a GIF file, but the closest option was to export as a TIFF. So I tried that next.

Umm... that didn't work at all.

Are you starting to feel like Goldilocks yet?

Finally, I tried the only other export option I found in Windows Journal: mht or mhtml (a "web archive" file).

I thought this was my long-searched-for solution, but then I tried to open the mhtml files in alternte browsers and discovered you have to have a relatively current version of Internet Explorer to view the file. Here's a link to the file. I've tried it in Firefox 2, Firefox 3, IE 5, and Safari, but it doesn't open in any of those.

So, that's pretty much what I've been trying to figure out all day... anyone else have a brilliant idea about a universally sharable format to export from Windows Journal?

Microsoft is not making me like them much today.

Integration by Parts with a Tablet

2008-06-06T13:38:00.001-04:00

...

Need I say more?

MathTV: A Video Example Library

2008-06-04T22:00:00.005-04:00

I stumbled across this website, MathTV, which has the beginning of a collection of video examples. The site is put up by Pat McKeague, who has authored several math textbooks.

What makes it unique is that the same example is explained by multiple people, including one lesson that is spoken in Spanish.

You can currently browse the complete site for free, but as soon as they are done with programming, the subscription rate will be $5 a month. It's a neat idea to have multiple "tutors" explain the same problem - after all, we know that students often need a problem explained to them in just the right way.

Personally, I'd add another set of videos recorded off a tablet PC, because of the incredible visual enhancement that you get from the ability to highlight parts of the problem. Here is a simple visual that demonstrates:

(it's not as "clean" as my normal tablet visuals, but this one was created with an $80 peripheral Bamboo tablet ... and so I think it's not too bad!)

Welcome to Your Brain Reading Group

2008-06-01T16:57:00.005-04:00

One more ... this is a subject near and dear to me, as my mother had a stroke when I was 5 years old, and ever since then, the brain has utterly fascinated me. Why does it work? Why does it not work? I think I really should have been a neuroscientist, but I have a bit too much invested in other subjects now. Maybe in my retirement.

Anyways, the book is called Welcome ot Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life, by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang.

In particular, I think we should look at what this book tells us about learning in a classroom, online, and with technology. If you'd like to join this learning community and discussion, enroll yourself at http://moodle.teachingcollegemath.com/ using the enrollment key "losekeys" (lowercase, no quotes).

Same disclaimer as the other groups ... being a site administrator is not my job ... please forgive moodle technical glitches gracefully.

New Kind of Science Reading Group

2008-06-01T15:25:00.004-04:00

As promised last week, I have created a forum for the A New Kind of Science reading group on my moodle site, http://moodle.teachingcollegemath.com/ (bookmark it if you're going to participate).

You will have to create a user account on the site (which I think requires verification by email).
Then to enroll in the discussion (course RDGP102) you will need the enrollment code, which is "nks" (all lowercase, the abbreviation for the book).

If someone (other than I) is willing to act as the "instructor" and help with moderating the discussions, that would be great! Send me an email.

So, if you're looking for some social community while you read the book, here's your opportunity! Join us online. The official language will be English, but I welcome international participants if they have some kind of translation service they can use!

Disclaimer: This is an experiment. I have no idea what I am doing with Moodle - I am learning as I go. There will be technical glitches and I will figure them out as I go.

Calculus Wars Reading Group

2008-06-01T15:16:00.004-04:00

Okay, finally I'm digging out. I have created a forum for the Calculus Wars reading group on my moodle site, http://moodle.teachingcollegemath.com/ (bookmark it if you're going to participate).

You will have to create a user account on the site (which I think requires verification by email).

Then to enroll in the discussion (course RDGP101) you will need the enrollment code, which is "socrates" (all lowercase, the middle name of the author).

If someone (other than I) is willing to act as the "instructor" and help with moderating the discussions, that would be great! Send me an email.

Disclaimer: This is an experiment. I have no idea what I am doing with Moodle - I am learning as I go. There will be technical glitches and I will figure them out as I go.