Screening all 9 hours of LOTR!!!
Yes, there is life after my AP Calculus BC class! This is by far my favorite time of year. This "season," for want of a better term, starts with LIMACON around the ides of March and ICON around the nones of April. Of course, we also start AP Review around this time followed by AP Exam Week during the calens of May! The AP Calculus exams are usually given early during the 2 AP Weeks, so we have a lot of time to kill after Calculus!
View of my classroom from left rear to left front side.
As a result, Life After Calculus, aka LAC, has evolved into an art form. Right after the AP Exam, we have a Movie Marathon. Traditionally, our Movie Marathon, starts with "Stand and Deliver," but I couldn't bear to watch that movie this year as Jaime Escalante passed away not so long ago. We usually show one or two other movies to do with math, such as "A Beautiful Mind" or "The Proof." In recent years, we've been doing Science Fiction trilogies like "Star Wars" or "Planet of the Apes," etc. I justify this odd behavior by naming each and every TI Graphing Calculator we've ever used after a scifi character.
View of my classroom from right rear to right front side.
TI81 = Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars IV)
TI82 = Klaatu (The Day The Earth Stood Still)
TI83 = Ziggie (Quantum Leap TV series)
TI84 = Joshua (Wargames)
TI85 = Johnny5 (Short Circuit)
TI86 = Spock (Star Trek TV series)
TI89 = Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odysee)
TI92 = Colossus (The Forbin Project)
I use names of characters from these movies and TV series. So, I claim that I'm still looking for a good name for the latest GC, the TI Inspire CAS. For example, last year we saw all 3 versions of "I Am Legend" (Vincent Price, Charleton Heston and Will Smith) and decided to name the Inspire after Dr. Neville! The year before that, I was still looking for a good name for the Inspire, so we viewed "Back to the Future" and chose the name Doc Brown, but it didn't stick. This year, we went crazy and decided to watch all 9 hours of "The Lord of the Rings!" We viewed 2 DVDs worth of LOTR during AP Week and saved the last DVD for these last few days of school. Maybe we'll rename the Inspire as "Nazgul?"
In between these 2 screenings of LOTR, we actually managed to do a lot of math! What follows is a record of some of the topics we covered. We spent some time, LAC Days 1-8, on loose ends in BC Calculus previewing some topics in Calc III and IV. Then I showed my students how to use a bit of SAGE, http://www.sagemath.org
Life aftercalcday1
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"10 Trig Identities you must know cold, from Pythagoras to Euler!"
"10 Trig Identities you must know cold, from Pythagoras to Euler!"
Life aftercalcday2
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Everything you ever wanted to know about Complex Exponents using Euler's Identity!"
"Everything you ever wanted to know about Complex Exponents using Euler's Identity!"
Life aftercalcday3
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs without damping!"
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs without damping!"
Life aftercalcday5
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs, the Complex case!"
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs, the Complex case!"
Life aftercalcday7
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Solving Simultaneous DiffEqus modeling competing populations using Slope Fields!"
"Solving Simultaneous DiffEqus modeling competing populations using Slope Fields!"
Life aftercalcday8
View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"The infamous free-fall plus air resistance DiffEqus!"
Here's some of the SAGE worksheets
Arithmetic 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/152
Algebra 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/153
Algebra 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/154
Vectors 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/155
Vectors 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/156
Matrices 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/157
Matrices 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/158
Matrices 103: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/159
Matrices 104: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/160
Matrices 105: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/161
Geometry 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/162
"The infamous free-fall plus air resistance DiffEqus!"
Here's some of the SAGE worksheets
Arithmetic 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/152
Algebra 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/153
Algebra 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/154
Vectors 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/155
Vectors 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/156
Matrices 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/157
Matrices 102: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/158
Matrices 103: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/159
Matrices 104: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/160
Matrices 105: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/161
Geometry 101: http://alpha.sagenb.org/home/pub/162
Here's some screen-casts of these SAGE tutorials!
What do ya think?
Teaching with Technology,
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