Natural Blogarithms

So here’s a quick overview of what I’ve done so far at ICTCM.

Friday:

1. First thing off the bat was the keynote address by  Frank Hughes, Vice President for Training Products at Tietronix Software.  We presented the idea of using immersive 3d environment to engage our students and deliver course content in a medium that matches the mindset of the newest generation of college students.  The only problem I had with this idea is that the immersive environments were no different than the contaminant dispersal models that I was involved in developing 10 years ago at Texas Tech under an army contract and there was no clear explanation of how we might use the environments created by Tietronix to, as he said, "just plug in our mathematics."

2. I attended Maria Anderson, of math blogging fame, where the primary topic of her talk was to demonstrate the use of WebAssign as a course management tool.  Poor Maria was faced with a room full of excited and interested math educators who she, several times, had to fend off with a stick because the questions kept flying and pulling her talk in several different directions simultaneously.  Nice job, though, Maria!  I’ve got some great ideas for building community among my online students.

3. I attended a talk by Robert Lopez on using Maple 11 to do "Clickable Calculus", syntax free computing in Maple.  There were many new features that I were new to me in Maple 11 and I think I just might have to run out and get a copy so I can convince myself and my colleagues its time to upgrade.

<lunch break - mmmmm, pepper steak and fried rice>

4.  Robert Talbert, another world renowned blogger, demonstrate his use of student developed wikis in a couple of his courses.  I was definitely intrigued on the use of wikis for keeping track of presented homework and especially the idea of an open-wiki exam at the end of the term.  Fantastic talk!

5. Next, Mario Triola presented a talk on Statistical Mythbusters.  Great fodder for a series of blog posts to come.

6.  I was introduced to OCTAVE, an freeware competitor (copy-cat?) of MATLAB.  The exorbitant cost of MATLAB makes this alternative a very interesting option to consider.  I was absolutely amazed by the fact that this software was so nearly equivalent to MATLAB when it comes to its basic functions.  It performs the numerical computations I need with the same syntax.  Very nice alternative for my students.

<more to come, off to my next talk>

written by SplineGuy