Sage Edu Days - Day Three

View from Dinner Last Night at the Seattle Tennis Club

This is the last day of Sage Education Days 3, and Seattle weather is back to normal---overcast with light rain. Here is a link to a video of yesterday's status reports http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqGFadFfYt8.

Linear Algebra

Rob Beezer (University of Puget Sound) told everyone about what he did on his sabbatical last year, including his stay at African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town. Lots of Sage at AIMS. Great photos of the safari! Rob talked about his open-source book, A First Course in Linear Algebra. Up to date development information can be found at http://wiki.sagemath.org/devel/LatexToWorksheet. You can find the Sage worksheet version of AATA (my book) in the same place.

On a side note, I have a 400 page manuscript for an ordinary differential equations text. The text emphasizes systems and would make a good open-source textbook/Sage project. If someone is interested in working with me on this, please let me know.

Numerical Analysis

Jason Grout (Drake University) talked about teaching numerical analysis with Sage. Jason has lots of good ideas about how to use Sage in any course. He suggested setting up a specific account for students to turn in Sage assignments. Students can then share their assignments with the account. To grade an assignment, you can just log onto the account, execute all of the Sage cells, and make any needed comments in a different colored font.

Interact Design

Open mic session with MC Jason Grout (Drake University). Lots of interesting examples. See http://wiki.sagemath.org/interact/ for examples and http://sagemath.org/doc/reference/sagenb/notebook/interact.html#sagenb.notebook.interact.interact to start learning about how the interact works in Sage. Also go to http://www.sagenb.org/ and browse the published worksheets (no login required).

Writing interacts might make good student projects. John Perry said that he has a little experience using interacts this way. It would be easier to encourage some colleagues (who might not willing to write their own) to use interacts in the classroom if there is a place where we can direct them.

UTMOST Test Sites Meeting

This was an informal Q and A session. A copy of the original proposal can be found at http://artsci.drake.edu/grout/lib/exe/fetch.php/ccli-2009.pdf. Jason Grout is taking notes and will post to the UTMOST grant wiki.

Status Reports and Wrap-Up

Status reports will be on YouTube (accessible from the conference wiki). Personally, I have gotten tex2sws (textbook conversion) to work, have some new ideas on how to make Sage work in the classroom, met with the UTMOST group, and have gotten python to work on my iPhone. I am realizing that I knew a lot of UNIX and LINUX at one point and am going to have to relearn it.