Calling all attendees of LIMACON 2014 at SUNY Old Westbury

LIMACON 2014 from A Jorge Garcia

Calling all attendees of LIMACON 2014 at SUNY Old Westbury

Please let me know if you find any of the following info useful.

If you were at LIMACON today (http://www.limathconference.org) here's the answers to the questions I was asked:

(1) Can you crash the new SAGECELL?

The answer is no!

See my attempt to crash it here. Here's another attempt inspired by PI Day. See SAGE documentation here. Also, this is the original SAGE NoteBook server. If you need even more horsepower, try https://cloud.sagemath.com which is based on a huge supercomputer at the University of Washington with 288 cores, 1.2TB RAM and 50TB disk space. 

(2) Are Camtasia and Jing the only game in town if you want to screencast for your flipped classroom?

The answer is no!

Take a look at http://screencast-o-matic.com or use Screen Recorder in Smart NoteBook or use a desktop recorder like avconv or ffmpeg. One problem you have to watch out for is that Screen Recorder creates large *.wav files that use up a lot of disk space really fast! Also, Screencast-o-matic takes a while to render an *.mp4 file after you are done recording!

(3) In a flipped classroom, when the students are working in groups, do you have to go old school and stop group work to lecture in front of the room when one or more groups are struggling?

The answer is no!

Goto http://www.whiteboardsusa.com so you can give each group a portable whiteboard to do their work. Then, if one group has a good solution, they can share it with the rest of the class!

(4) Do your screencasts have to be only 5-10 minutes long and only on simple skills?

The answer is no!

If you are teaching preCalculus, Calculus, preCompSci or CompSci like me, I think your videos need to be a bit more in depth. I do what I call a modified flip. When I cover something new in class, I record the whole 40 minutes. Students can use the recording to help with that night's homework. Students can use the screencast to review later in the year or to make up work missed. Students can fast forward and rewind as needed!

(5) In this day and age of Budget Cuts, Teacher Lay Offs and Huge Class Sizes, do you have to cancel AP Computer Science?

The answer is no!

My intro CS course did not have enough enrollment this year to meet the new class size minimum. So, my intro course was cancelled. What did Guidance do? They rescheduled the intro kids into AP CS! This would not have been my first choice, now I have 10th, 11th and 12th graders in AP and they are doing great!

Please note:

I'm usually a speaker at LIMACON, but this year I took a break! In fact, I spoke last year after an imposed 2 year break. Now LIMACON is imposing a 3 year period before you can speak again. So, I won't speak at LIMACON again until 2016 somewhere near PI Day! BTW, I also spoke for T^3 at Molloy College last November. That conference is held only every 3 years, so I suppose that 2016 will a busy year for me.

As you can tell, I went to lots of presentations about flipping the classroom. The motto seems to be: "You don't have to be the Sage on Stage anymore! Be the facilitator and let the students do their work!" ... no pun intended re "sage."

Finally, this blog post was originally a forum post on https://apcommunity.collegeboard.org/ in the AP Calculus Teachers' group.

HTH, 

A. Jorge Garcia

http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com

http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009

Generally Speaking,

A. Jorge Garcia

Applied Math, Physics and CS

http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009
2013 NYS Secondary Math PAEMST Nominee

Teaching with Technology, 

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LIMACON 2013: SAGE Advice - Let's replace TI-83s???

UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE
I was a guest speaker at LIMACON 2013 today. What you will find below is a mix of my experience preparing for LIMACON this year and an update of all the materials I created for and during the talk including a screencast! It's all about coding in math, science and computer science classes in High School! Take a look at this site too.

UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE

LIMACON 2013 is March 15th at SUNY Old Westbury and I have to get my presentation together! My problem is that I have too much material. Do I speak about "SAGE Advice: preCalculus" or "SAGE Advice: Calculus?" Do I base it on all my pretests or make a packet of samples? 

My plan was to speak on how I used SAGE in preCalculus this year in place of a TI-83/84 Graphing Calculator. I never got to use SAGE in preCalculus, however. I tried to introduce SAGE and Python slowly and ween the students off the Graphing Calculator. That was a huge mistake. They never wanted to get rid of the Graphing Calculator. So, I'm presenting on what I'll do differently next year! I will start day one with only SAGE in class. I have taken this approach in my preComputer Science Honors class with great success. Further, SAGE is a viable alternative in preCalculus as this course does not have an exit exam such as a Regents or AP requiring the Graphing Calculator. SAGE is great for doing High School as well as College and advanced mathematics. SAGE is a free alternative to Mathematica and MATLAB available online. Why not show our students how to code a bit in Python and use more modern technology such as a CAS (Computer Algebra System)? 

So, I've been looking at some preTest review sheets we had over the course of this year reflecting our preCalculus curriculum and coding some SAGE snippets to share. I'm trying to solve preTest1A-preTest12A with SAGE and Python. I'll record a screencast of the presentation if I can hook up my laptop correctly. In November, I'm speaking at T^3 Molloy so I can do Calculus then. 

Here's my SAGE Solutions:
preTEST1A Coordinate Geometryhttps://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/404/
preTEST2A Linear Functions https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/405/
preTEST4A Polynomial Functions https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/406/
preTEST5A Exponents and Logarithms
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/407/
preTEST6-7A Trig Identities
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/410/
preTEST8A Law of Sines and Cosines
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/411/
preTEST9 Vectors in 2D and 3D
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/412/
preTEST10A Conics and Polar
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/413/
preTEST11A Matrix Algebra
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/414/
preTEST12A Sequences and Series
https://sage.math.clemson.edu:34567/home/pub/415/

Here's a handout from my LIMACON presentation:

Limacon2013 - SAGE Advice: preCalculus from A Jorge Garcia

Here's the preTests I'm working with:

4R2012 preTest1A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest2A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest4A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest5A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest6+7A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest8A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest9A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest10A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest11A from A Jorge Garcia

4R2012 preTest12A from A Jorge Garcia

Limacon 2013 from A Jorge Garcia

I've also been invited to speak for T^3 at Molloy College in November!

T3 2013 speaker proposal form 2 pagefrom A Jorge Garcia

CORRECTION:
Somewhere in my ScreenCast above I said something like:
I've been teaching - 
Programming since 1975
High School Math and Science since 1984
AP Calculus and CompSci since 1993
Linux Clusters since 2002
and SAGE since 2011.

What I should have said was:
I've been teaching with -
BASIC since 1975
Pascal since 1984
C/C++ since 1993
Java since 2002
and Python since 2011!

Based on the pattern above, it seems that I change what I'm teaching approximately every 9 years or so.  I wonder what 2020 will bring?

Well, that's all folks! I hope you got something out of all the above.

Generally Speaking,

My New Speaker Schedule!

LIMACON 2013 is March 15th at SUNY Old Westbbury. See the flyer below. I'm speaker number 43! I'll be speaking on how to integrate SAGE into your math classroom. I've done so in my Computer Science class. I'm trying to move away from Graphing Calculators in Math class. I prefer a PC based solution with a Computer Algebra System such as SAGE, Octave or R. SAGE is a lot like Mathematica. Octave is a lot like MATLAB. R is a lot like SPSS. Also, Python is to SAGE as BASIC is to TI83/84. So, we can use numpy and scipy in SAGE to get the functionality of Octave and R! Also, if you have an MPI based Linux cluster, you can use mpi4py!

Limacon 2013 from A Jorge Garcia

 

I've also been invited to speak for T^3 at Molloy College in November!

T3 2013 speaker proposal form 2 page from A Jorge Garcia

FYI, I just updated my resume for the PAEMST application (see below). I've basically uploaded and filled out everything on the application website except for my essay. I'm focusing on LIMACON now. SO. after that, 3/15/13, I can work on the essay. The application isn't due until 5/1/13 after all...

Resume 2013 from A Jorge Garcia

Generally Speaking,

LIMACON 2013 Coming Soon!

OK, it's getting to be about that time of year again! LIMACON 2013 is March 15th at SUNY Old Westbbury. See the flyer below. I'm speaker number 43! I'll be speaking on how to integrate SAGE into your math classroom. I've done so in my Computer Science class. I'm trying to move away from Graphing Calculators in Math class. I prefer a PC based solution with a Computer Algebra System such as SAGE, Octave or R. SAGE is a lot like Mathematica. Octave is a lot like MATLAB. R is a lot like SPSS. Also, Python is to SAGE as BASIC is to TI83/84. So, we can use numpy and scipy in SAGE to get the functionality of Octave and R! Also, if you have an MPI based Linux cluster, you can use mpi4py!

Generally Speaking,

Is there life after Calculus?

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!" 

Life aftercalcday2

View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"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!" 

Life aftercalcday4

View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs with damping!"  

Life aftercalcday5

View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Second Order DiffEqus modeling springs, the Complex case!"  

Life aftercalcday6

View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"Solving DiffEqus without Anti-Differentiating?: 

Life aftercalcday7

View more presentations from A Jorge Garcia
"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

Here's some screen-casts of these SAGE tutorials!

What do ya think? 

Teaching with Technology, 

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Math Conferences 2010-2011

SDD, Baldwin UFSD: Staff Development Day

(11/2010 Math Conference)

I spoke about using SAGE in High School Math classes at my Staff Development Day at my home school, Baldwin Senior High School this past November!

T^3, Molloy College: Teachers Teaching with Technology

(11/2010 Math Conference)

Then I spoke some more about teaching Mathematics with SAGE at the T^3 (Teachers Teaching with Technology) conference this past November at Molloy College. T63 is sponsored by TI (Texas Instruments). You would think they'd be a little miffed at my supporting PC based CAS (Computer Algebra System) as opposed to their handheld version (TI-89, TI-92, TI-200, TI-Voyage and TI-nSpire CAS).

Tcubed

View more documents from A Jorge Garcia

I also spoke about teaching and learning Mathematics with technology in other contexts. This would include the use of SmartBoards vs. Tablets and Tablets vs. Tablet PCs. I should everyone how I use http://screencast-o-matic.com to record my classes for http://www.youtube.com/calcpage and http://www.edmodo.com and how my students use these resources. We also talked about my YouTube Wednesday project. See the links onthe right side of this blog for examples.

LIMACON, SUNY Old Westbury: Long Island MAth CONference

(3/2011 Math Conference)

I usually speak at LIMACON (Long Island MAth CONference) as well. This year I was going to take a break from LIMACON after 20 consecutive years of attending or presenting. Then one of my students won the LIMACON award! So, just when I thought I was free, the yanked me right back into the middle of it all!

Limacon 2011

View more documents from A Jorge Garcia

I hope you enjoyed this week's updates - that's all folks!

Generally Speaking,

Taking the show on the road!

LIMACON 2010 went well. I attended a great talk in the morning by Al Cavalaro who spoke about important figures in math history. He sure knew his stuff! He included some very funny anecdotes and some little known stories. We talked about Galois, Fermat, Pascal, Ada Lovelace and Grace Murray Hopper just to name a few. I wanted to see his brother, Ron, who usually gives a nice talk about math and computers, but his talk was scheduled opposite mine.

My presentation was going to be at the end of the day. I noticed in the schedule, however, that the computer room was not to be used the hour before. So, I figured I'd setup early to make sure I didn't have any technical difficulties at the last minute! Lucky I did that, because I ended up debugging all sorts of connectivity and audio problems....

Anyway, I recorded a small part of the presentation as you can see above. I showed everyone how I setup my "youtube recording studio" and how I render a screen-cast for upload. In the process I explained how I use Smart Notebook and my tablet to save notes as pdfs. Also, I compared and contrasted teaching a math lesson with VTI vs SAGE.

The only problem I had, was near the end when I wanted to have a hands-on workshop using SAGE. I got everyone to login to sagenb and make an account. Then everything went to hell! The internet connection was so slow that I could not demo much beyond the 7 operators (+,-,*,/,//,%,**) used in python. 

I mentioned that every Wednesday I show a youtube for 5 or 10 minutes if my students are up to date on their work.  I call it "Youtube Wednesday." I show a funny or educational video related to math or computing. So, we ended the session by some of sharing our favorite youtubes: I Will Derive, Mathematicious, Mathematical Mystery Tour, Mechanical Universe, MIT Lectures, Grace Murray Hopper on 60 Minutes, etc.

Oh well, I think I got my points across and my participants got something out of my talk.  They can play with SAGE at their leisure using the CD I burned for them. Hopefully, things will go more smoothly for my T^3 presentation on the same topic in November at Molloy College. 50 was way too short a time frame to do what I wanted, at Molloy I think I get 90 minutes!

BTW, I go to conferences like this to "show and tell." In other words, I like to share my experience teaching with technology with other teachers. I also want to advertise my website, blog and youtube channel. So, yes it is flattering, but please don't try to recruit me! I don't know how many people were trying to recruit me for their schools. I've had a full time job teaching AP Calculus and Computer Science at a local High School for nearly 30 years now and don't plan on starting over somewhere else at this stage.  I also teach part time at the local college at night. All my other time is reserved for the wife and kidz.... 

Teaching with Technology, 

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