Thursday, July 21, 2011

Welcome to Summer Session II!

Wow, is it really Summer Session II 2011 at Nassau Community College already? I am privileged to have a section of 25 eager new students in NCC Math 122, Harvard Calculus I. Welcome!

We just finished our first week. We flew by Chapter 2 on differentiation in the 5th edition of Deborah Hughes-Hallett's wonderful reformed text, Calculus Single Variable. The first thing I did (after making seating assignments, discussing the syllabus and collecting bio sheets) was to create an http://www.edmodo.com group just for this class and showed my new students how to join and spoke to the benefits of joining. Of course, I had to show them http://shadowfax.blogspot.com and http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 and I began the class with a filk from Youtube (Mathematicious).


Here's some of the first uploads I made to Edmodo for this group. Lesson 201 was about limits and finding the derivative at a point using convergence tables. This document is the syllabus for this summer. In other words, all the legalize and rules of the road! Also, all the assignments are listed as a pacing guide.

This pdf is a copy of all my SmartNotes for Chapter 2 Lesson 1. As you can see, I started talking about solving problems Graphically, Numercally, Analytically or Wordily!

This YouTube is a ScreenCast of the first class. 




Lesson 202 was about finding derivative functions analytically. In this, the second class, I realized that I had never formally stated the definition of continuity at a point, what I call the "Cuban Theorem." So, after stating this definition, I had to start that class with "Theorem Night!" 




Yesterday's class, Lesson 203, was mostly about Newton's Method and writing a program to do Newton's Method in TI-83/84 BASIC (today was our first test). BTW, I had to start this class with "I Will Derive!" I think Monday we'll view "Calculus Rhapsody."



HTH, I hope you enjoyed our intro to Calculus!

Learning with Technology, 

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