Dear everyone,
This is a short plug for the Sage MAA PREP program this summer:
Sage: Using Open-Source Mathematics Software with Undergraduates (by
Karl-Dieter Crisman, Rob Beezer, and myself; see
http://www.maa.org/prep/2010/sage.html and
http://wiki.sagemath.org/prep/2010 ).
I know it's been mentioned before, but I thought I'd elaborate a bit.
My understanding is that the more quickly you apply to PREP programs,
the better chance you have of getting in, so don't delay if you're
interested! We're not assuming Sage experience (and we are targeting
our presentation to that level), but all people are welcome to apply!
If you have a little Sage experience, but want to learn more and want to
use Sage in your classroom, this program might be just the thing to help
you. If you have a friend who has wanted to learn Sage to use in their
classroom, this might be perfect for them.
The Sage PREP program has a different format than other PREP program,
which is an experiment in how to increase the effectiveness of some PREP
programs. The program is an online program (i.e., we do all sessions
with video-casting software that let us all talk together over the
internet, and you would also probably see the presenter or the
presenter's computer screen), so you can "attend" from wherever you are.
The first day (22 May) is an introduction to Sage (we don't assume any
Sage experience). Then there is a two-week break for participants to
use Sage a bit and get a little familiar with it. We will hold online
"office hours" via teleconferencing software to answer questions, as
well as set up an email list and provide some introductory Sage
worksheets to try out.
In the second week of June, there is an intensive 2-day set of online
teleconferencing sessions where we will look at how Sage can be used in
various classes, how curricular materials can be designed with Sage,
etc. We plan to ask the participants for topics interesting to them,
and also will talk about using Sage in standard courses like calculus,
linear algebra, etc. Then there are two months (June and July) in which
we will continue to hold online "office hours" to answer questions and
help people design their own curricular materials in Sage. There will
also be a mailing list set up for people to share ideas, and a PREP Sage
server where people can write or collaborate on Sage materials using
Sage's easy web collaboration capabilities. The goal here is to help
people be comfortable with Sage, help people write curricular material
in Sage, and provide lots of feedback and suggestions over an extended
period of time.
We will then have a wrap-up day in August the Monday after Mathfest.
The hope is that with this approach to the program, participants will be
able to absorb and apply the information better because we aren't trying
to do everything in just one week. I'm excited to try it.
Since a lot of Sage development is driven by the needs of the
curriculum, I expect that we may also add some requested features to
Sage over the summer. As an example of curriculum driving the
development, several weeks ago "olazo" (sorry; I don't know his real
name) wrote a spherical_plot3d function for Sage which makes it easy to
plot things in spherical coordinates. Over the last few weeks, you've
probably seen that he and several of us have generalized this to a
general coordinate transformation capability in the plot3d command,
e.g., plot3d(theta^2, (theta, 0, 2*pi), (phi, 0, pi/2),
coordinates=Spherical(rho, theta, phi)). This functionality will
probably go into Sage soon and be released in February. I'm excited to
ask my calc 3 class this semester to use it to explore lots of different
coordinate systems.
Feel free to email me, Karl-Dieter Crisman, or Rob Beezer with any
questions you might have.
Thanks,
Jason
--
Jason Grout
[email protected]
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