ECI 831 Reflections

Today is the last day of class for the ECI 831 master’s course that I am taking. Alec (the prof) asked students to provide a bit of a reflection on how the course went, so here goes…

What you did:

• schellenbergmath.wikispaces.com
  • created a wiki to house math screencasts created with the math classes I teach (Math 10 - Math C30). Example screencasts are done by me, and students do a bunch in the “Textbook problems” sections of the wiki.
• cs30.wikispaces.com
  
  • a wiki for my Computer Science 30 course, in which all of my students are members of the site, and have full permissions to do anything they want. We had to go this route as opposed to an open wiki, as this was the only way to give the students the ability to change the design of the site.
• drupal.whoknows.ca
  • a last minute addition to the major project, I decided to evaluate Drupal to see whether it was a suitable tool to create and maintain our school website.

What you learned:

Math wiki

• students LOVE having access to instruction on their own terms
• students want to have the same instruction as if they were at class (ie. although my screencasts could be used by any math student, my students particularly enjoy the fact that it is me they are hearing)
• students are excited to show off what they have done — will show friends/parents screencasts that they have created in class
• typesetting math in wikispaces is better than many places on the web, but the lack of inline equations is still frustrating (ie. an equation needs to be on its own line)
• it’s incredibly humbling to capture what you do and throw it up online for all to see (without editing it at all). At first, I would toss out a video if I made a little mistake, or thought that I’d said “um” too many times. Now, something pretty bad has to happen for me to not just fix it up while ‘on camera’. I think there is value in my students seeing me work through technical or mathematical issues, whether in class or in the archived class content online.

CS wiki

• students found the lack of full HTML limiting (one got around it by downloading a backup copy of the website, which allowed him to check which CSS class a certain <div> was accessing. Quite clever)
• students enjoyed personalizing the class wiki — a sense of ownership was developed. Although their personalization resulted in a fairly mediocre looking site, they certainly enjoyed the process. Will try to extend this further to see if it can help with next point.
• organic growth of a wiki resource is hard — and depending on the type of resource, fairly useless (cite Just Google It!)

Drupal

• setting up a Drupal site is quite simple, if you have prerequisite knowledge of how to install MySQL databases, etc on your webserver (can be even easier if your webhost has an auto-install script)
• looks like I’ll be using this to get a production-ready site up for our school
• once the basic site is created, editing it should be a cinch — may need to train one other person at school in the complexities of Drupal, but it should be fairly simple…

Barriers

• Jing is slow; makes my low end machine at school fairly unresponsive
• Wikispaces lack of full HTML editing was irritating for the CS wiki — might look for another wiki that allows for it.
• teach support at school can be… interesting. For example, IT wouldn’t let me use an Ubuntu LiveCD, as I’d have to change the BIOS settings, so instead the IT department spent about 25 manhours getting VMware server and an Ubuntu image on the machines, only to find that they actually need more RAM due to the fact that you are then running two operating systems simultaneously. The RAM comes this Friday. More manhours to follow.)

In conclusion, I’d have to say that my digital project was a resounding success. My students have thanked me many times over for the math wiki, and the CS students are finding their wiki useful as well. (Total tangent — check out the progression in what this student knows about web design by checking out his assignments one after another. This is why I love teaching CS.) I am more and more convinced that the idea of “small tools, loosely joined” is the way to go (this preference is my one hesitation on using Drupal for the school site, incidentally). I’m really pleased with how the combination of Jing and Wikispaces works for my math wiki. For my CS blog, being able to embed del.icio.us links that I tag “CS30″ makes it dead simple for me to share interesting sites with my students.

I’m always on the lookout for new tools that will add some sort of functionality to how I work and how I teach. Most don’t find their way into my classroom, but when they do, it’s pretty powerful.

Typesetting Math in Wikispaces and WordPress

One difficulty I have had as a math teacher using the internet a lot is that typesetting math is frustrating. This is especially true when students begin typing math, as you have to teach them a whole new math notation; ^ means exponent, ** is also exponent, etc. It’s just messy.

There are a few tools available to make things better. If you are using a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, there is usually a built in math equation editor that allows you to typeset equations quite nicely. If you memorize the shortcut keys (such as Cmd-F for a fraction, Cmd-H for exponent, etc.), you can actually type math at a respectable speed. If you, or your school, are willing to put out some cash (~$60), you can also buy the big brother version of equation editor called MathType. Another option is to use LaTeX, which is a professional typesetting language, though it is a steep learning curve, and more work than it’s worth for many teachers.

It may not be immediately obvious how this relates to typesetting math on the web. As it turns out, some web services allow the use of LaTeX math equations. Here on wikispaces, you can use LaTeX to typeset something that isn’t normally fun to type, like:

Or perhaps a basic fraction, like this:

The LaTeX code for these isn’t a lot of fun — it looks like this:

\lim_{x\to\infty}f(x)=0

and this:

\frac{a+2}{b+4}

Who wants to memorize how to do that, anyhow? (Full disclosure: at one point, I did actually memorize this…) So, rather than writing LaTeX code directly, you have two options:

- if you own MathType, simply change the Export settings to LaTeX. Then, select the part of the equation you’d like to use and copy and paste it into wikispaces. Instead of copying an image, you are now copying the LaTeX code.

- if you don’t own MathType, and are working on a Windows machine, you can use TexAide. It’s freeware, from the same company that makes MathType, and it lets you type your math, then simply copy and paste it as LaTeX code. It’s really handy, especially since it uses the same engine as MathType, so all the same keyboard shortcuts work, just like Equation Editor.

If you are on a Mac, the only really nice way I’ve found to easily generate LaTeX code is through the full version of MathType. If anyone knows of a nice, free solution, please do share.

How to embed the math into your website of choice will depend entirely on which site you are using. On Wikispaces, the first equation above is simply surrounded by math tags. It therefore looks like:

[[math]]
\lim_{x\to\infty}f(x)=0
[[math]]

On WordPress.com, you will need to surround the LaTeX code with $ symbols, and declare the code to be LaTeX. The same equation from above would therefore be:

latex \lim_{x\to\infty}f(x)=0  (should have $ on either end of that)

Hopefully someone else finds this useful.

Cross-posted to the T4L wiki at http://t4tl.wikispaces.com/Typesetting+Math+in+Wikispaces

Problem Based Learning in Math and CS

I’ve been trying to sort out how to incorporate the problem based learning model in my teaching (most recently advocated by Chris Lehman during a session for ECI 831).  I find it much easier to do when teaching computer science than when teaching math (just so you know, I teach about 90% senior math, 10% computer science).  I’ve been pondering why that is, and I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that I haven’t been indoctrinated as much in my teaching of CS.

Although I was trained in computer science during my university days (in C++, no less), the vast majority of what I do now has been a result of teaching myself. When trying to sort out what language to teach my students in an introduction course (CS 20), I did a bunch of research and ended up choosing Python.  In the process, however, I tried out a number of languages, enough to become semi-fluent in about 5 or 6.Since I’m a geek, I randomly get the urge to create a program to automate something or solve a problem I’m having.  This lets me keep my skill level up in a variety of languages, as they all have strengths and weaknesses.  All this has contributed to me becoming rather proficient at learning whatever I need to know by researching it on my own.  I want my students to be able to do this.

As I said, this easy for me to do in CS.  I can give the students a few basic nuggets of info, then let them go to it.  For example, we’re using PHP to learn how interactive websites work right now.  I taught them some basics about how PHP works, just enough to get their feet wet, then gave them a few simple assignments.  The students have access to the net (obviously), and can therefore research methods of solving whichever problem I’ve set for them (say, creating a web form and spitting out the submissions to a text file).  I essentially float around, acting as a resource, and occasionally will grab all of their attention by showing them a quick tip or trick on the projector.

In math, I’m at a loss.  This is crazy, as I was a mathematics major at university, and took way more math courses than CS.  However, the curriculum is so much tighter in a math course (it’s a struggle to finish it all), and the pressure to conform to the accepted way of teaching is so great (by students, parents, nearly everyone…), I find problem based learning really hard to implement.  Not only that, but the sequence of high school math courses is such that if I don’t get around to teaching them something, they are completely lost in their next class (which I may or may not be teaching them).

Because of this, I don’t really use PBL in my math classes right now.  What I do, however, is make my students construct the math that they learn on their own.  I’m there, and I ask questions, but it’s rare that I will give an answer without dishing it off to one of them.  So, if you were to visit one of my classes, you’d see me at the front of the room a fair bit, but I’m really conscientious about only writing what the students tell me to write.  I make them put the pieces together.

This takes engaged students, however.  I get them to buy in by being ridiculously excitable about math.  Seriously.  I tell them about Ug the Caveman, who created all of our number systems (some of them actually go for this, believe it or not).   I point and gesture like a madman.  I play random YouTube videos just for the heck of it.  We have fun.  In return, when I ask them a question, I get answers.  Lots of answers.  If it’s right, great.  If it’s wrong, great.  We figure it out together.

The downside is that I don’t ever get to sit down during a class.  The upside is that I’m pretty sure that by the end of our time together, my students are better at thinking than they were at the start.  It just so happens that I use traditional math knowledge to make them better thinkers.  I don’t believe that teaching them to think this way is any less valid than teaching them how computers and the web work, even if the material is esoteric and will be used by only a few of them.  The thinking, I keep telling myself, they can all use.