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I don't have classes on Friday, so week one of the semester is over. A few items of possible interest:
1) I'm very fond of Geometer's Sketchpad; it and Mathematica are core components of my research. There are two copies of GSP on campus; one, on my office computer, was bought for me by the department, and the other is on the computer in one of the classrooms, bought by the university. The advanced geometry courses, which I almost always teach, are always put in that room. So, Monday, prepping for that evening's E/NE Geometry class, I put together a couple of GSP notebooks and copied them to the network, so I could access them from the classroom. When I arrived there, I discovered that GSP... wasn't on that computer. (This is the second time this has happened; when OIT reinstalls software on the university system, as they do periodically, sometimes they forget to put GSP back on that one.) I dashed off a message to the Chair; the next day his secretary came down on OIT, and by the next class meeting, GSP was again available.
2) The geometry class only has four students - it was almost cancelled because of that, but it's a required course for Math Ed and only offered once a year, so it survived - so I'm shifting from straight lecture to something more interactive. At least one of the four is really sharp, which is a good percentage.
3) After one class yesterday, one of my students caught up with me to say I sounded (to him) like Neil deGrasse Tyson - not in voice, but in cadences. I've never actually heard Tyson speak, but I'll take it as a compliment. I am aware that butter was involved, of course. After the Linear Algebra II class, one student said, "Dr. :name:, you're making my head spin! I took Linear Algebra I twelve or thirteen years ago...." I made some encouraging noises. (We're reviewing key material from LAI at a compression rate of about 4:1. Of course she's having trouble, being that out of practice!)
4) Progress continues on my research. The idea I came up with last week definitely doesn't work all the time, but I've verified that it works pretty often. That will probably go into the fourth paper in the sequence. (Still haven't put the finishing touches on the first paper....)
All in all, not a bad first week.
1) I'm very fond of Geometer's Sketchpad; it and Mathematica are core components of my research. There are two copies of GSP on campus; one, on my office computer, was bought for me by the department, and the other is on the computer in one of the classrooms, bought by the university. The advanced geometry courses, which I almost always teach, are always put in that room. So, Monday, prepping for that evening's E/NE Geometry class, I put together a couple of GSP notebooks and copied them to the network, so I could access them from the classroom. When I arrived there, I discovered that GSP... wasn't on that computer. (This is the second time this has happened; when OIT reinstalls software on the university system, as they do periodically, sometimes they forget to put GSP back on that one.) I dashed off a message to the Chair; the next day his secretary came down on OIT, and by the next class meeting, GSP was again available.
2) The geometry class only has four students - it was almost cancelled because of that, but it's a required course for Math Ed and only offered once a year, so it survived - so I'm shifting from straight lecture to something more interactive. At least one of the four is really sharp, which is a good percentage.
3) After one class yesterday, one of my students caught up with me to say I sounded (to him) like Neil deGrasse Tyson - not in voice, but in cadences. I've never actually heard Tyson speak, but I'll take it as a compliment. I am aware that butter was involved, of course. After the Linear Algebra II class, one student said, "Dr. :name:, you're making my head spin! I took Linear Algebra I twelve or thirteen years ago...." I made some encouraging noises. (We're reviewing key material from LAI at a compression rate of about 4:1. Of course she's having trouble, being that out of practice!)
4) Progress continues on my research. The idea I came up with last week definitely doesn't work all the time, but I've verified that it works pretty often. That will probably go into the fourth paper in the sequence. (Still haven't put the finishing touches on the first paper....)
All in all, not a bad first week.
