Cal Armstrong

Cal Armstrong

A little off topic

MathML Strengthens Digital Math TextsDigital texts are moving beyond simply putting pages on a computer screen.In Kentucky, a small pilot study is demonstrating the benefits of this textbook technology for students with different learning styles. Instead of re-creating a complex…

So a little further

Well, we’re into quadratics now. The one section is doing really well incorporating Maple into their learning process — they fluidly jump back and forth between Maple & OneNote. The other class more stubbornly holds on to doing everything by…

Variables

Well, we’ve used the Curve Fitting Tool for the past couple of classes. Lesson learned: it’s best to be descriptive in your variables because using x and y is not conducive to the CFT (it wants to use x as…

The test

Things that immediately pops up….Having them able to use the TEXT to describe their variables and present their solutions neatly. We focused so much on the math work that I didn’t do enough on using the text component to explain…

And they find another one…

Well, we’ve been graphing now pretty successfully…. when we get to this simple little example:d = 230td = 200t+170.Plot the first, drag the second on to the grid, no problem. Then, we try to zoom/translate to approximate the intersection’s location.Well,…

2nd foray

Having done graphing with Maple the other day, we worked a little bit with solving systems of equations by substitution. One of the students mentioned that instead of assigning names by typing “L1:=y=3x+2” you could avoid the first equal sign…

Dipping a toe in…

Okay… well we made an attempt at Maple 12 today… just a brief introduction to graphing. I deliberately did it by assigning names to the equationsL1:=y=3x+2Then I chose to have them graph it implicitly. I’m trying to plan ahead here,…

So it starts…

It begins tomorrow. Well, actually, it doesn’t because the students don’t have their laptops tomorrow so we will just do a “welcome back to school, I’m your teacher, here’s a little activity” without involving any technology. So it will actually…

Out to the students

We’ve distributed out to the students instructions on how to install Maple on their laptop before they arrive in class. Normally (and in the future, one hopes) this will be part of the tablet image that goes on to the…