Beginnings: OpenStax Algebra and Trigonometry and Schoology

Many instructors are content to teach the same material in the same way year-after-year. Lecture notes only need occasional updating, tests can be pulled out of a filing cabinet. A few questions are changed and the test is given yet again. Sure, occasionally a new edition of the textbook adds a section or changes a homework set. Ruffles the feathers a bit, and then the routine returns.

I tend to shift and jump to new technologies and approaches that cause me to have to rework and reinvent my whole work flow. Rebuild homework and tests. This summer I am pilot testing OpenStax Algebra and Trigonometry.

Right off the bat there was a complication with using the online version. While the PDF is gorgeously laid out replete with homework set problem numbers, the online edition still lacks polish. Including numbering the problem sets. Since I use Schoology Basic as my learning management system, I needed a way to tell the students which problems to do in a text without numbers.

So I copied and pasted selected problems from the text into a Schoology assignment (no worries, the text is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licensed). But the equations are set using MathML and the MathJax stack. I use MathJax in my own pages. And while MathJax has a context menu that would let me access the MathML, Schoology is not running MathJax on its pages to produce math. My current kludge is a screen region capture and inserting an image into the assignment in Schoology. Beginnings are always a tad awkward and clumsy.



Perhaps I will find a more elegant solution at some point and look back on this as being the usual substandard work processes of a beginning with new technologies. Perhaps I will not. Either way, once again I am working without the net of being able to fall back on existing materials used in prior terms.

If a new text is not sufficiently disruptive, the course will be using Desmos graphing calculator for the first time. Might as well change everything. Perhaps the year will come when I will be too old to cope with seismic shifts. Perhaps that year is this year. I do not fear being wrong, I embrace being wrong. What I count on is an ability to toss out what isn't working and make changes as I go.

OpenStax Algebra and Trigonometry. Textbook content produced by OpenStax Algebra and Trigonometry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license. Mar 11, 2017 
http://cnx.org/contents/13ac107a-f15f-49d2-97e8-60ab2e3b519c@6.36.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plotting polar coordinates in Desmos and a vector addition demonstrator

Image
In an earlier post I noted that Desmos did not directly plot polar coordinates. Not only was I incorrect, but Desmos responded to my blog to correct me! Although I had at some point seen that one could define a function f(x)=3x+5 and then have Desmos calculate f(6), I had not absorbed how this might be used to plot polar coordinates. The above works beautifully . Realizing that I could effectively program Desmos, I applied this thinking to demonstrating how to add two vectors when given the magnitudes m and the direction angles theta. The graph calculates the i and j components for the two vectors and then adds the vectors, graphically displaying the result while also providing information on the magnitude and direction of the vector sum. m1 and theta1 are the magnitude and direction angle for one of the two vectors, m2 and theta2 are the magnitude and direction for the other vector. All four are dynamically interactive and can be changed. The diagram purports to illustra
Read more

Setting up a boxplot chart in Google Sheets with multiple boxplots on a single chart

Image
The  Google Statistics  add-on for Google Sheets can display multiple boxplots in a single chart. The key is the layout of the data. One column should be the variable by which the data is to be grouped, the other column should be the data to be box plotted. Set up the Statistics add-on with the data to be plotted as the variable, and the grouping column as the "by" variable. In this image I had deselected all but the boxplot option, the result was the appearance of the Moment, Standard errors, and Confidence intervals options. The default is apparently a 95% confidence interval for the mean. The result is multiple boxplots on a single chart with a common scale. The new tab that is created also quotes 95% confidence intervals for the mean. Note that as of 2018 the Google Statistics add-on cannot be found by search in the add-ons. In addition, as of May 2018 the add-on no longer verifies, possibly due to the add-on not having been updated since August 2017. One may ha
Read more

Traditional food dishes of Micronesia

Image
Clara, Jennette, and Joanie presented ground hard taro cooked in an umw, effectively a hot rock oven. Pohnpeian: rotama. Pingelapese: sero. Mwoakillese: rodma. Mortlockese: Amahd. Kosrae: rodoma. After cooking in an umw the rotama is pounded with the petiole of a palm frond. Rotama is made from hard or swamp taro, known as mwahng on Pohnpei, mweian on Pingalap, pula in Mortlockese, and pahsruhk on Kosrae. In traditional times on the outer islands the women had primary responsibility for tending the taro while the men handled fishing and climbing tasks. Joesen and Noeleen presented fermented breadfruit from the outer islands of Yap such as Woleai and Eauripik. The raw ingredients were actually brought in from Yap, Noeleen prepared the maare.  The leaf wrap is ti leaf - Cordyline fruticosa. Pauleen, Barnson, Trisha, Verginia, Con-ray, and Maylanda from Kitti, Pohnpei brought in mahi umw, koahpnoair koakihr, and uht sukusuk. Above is breadfruit umw, mahi umw, one o
Read more