Sunday, December 23, 2012

Quarter II, Week 7: ScreenCasts, SmartNotes and Code oh my!






Quarter II, Week 7: ScreenCasts, SmartNotes and Code oh my! 

Math 4R: preCalculus for Seniors
Math 4H: preCalculus Honors for Juniors
Math 5H: AP Calculus BC
CSH: Computer Science Honors
APCS: AP Computer Science
CIS(theta): Computing Independent Study
PAEMST: Presidential Award of Excellence
Ubuntu: Linux Install Fun and Games

Above you will find links to summaries of all my lessons for the past several weeks. So, this blog post serves as a Table of Contents for all my other blogs from class!

In addition, CIS(theta) is a summary of my Computing Independent Study class that meets after school like a club. 

PAEMST details my trials and tribulations regarding my 2012-2013 application for the Presidential Award of Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. 

Last, but not least, UBUNTU is a collection of blogs about installing, maintaining and teaching with Ubuntu Linux on my desktop and on my students' desktops in class!

I was sick on  YouTube Wednesday this week. However, we did go preCalculus and Calculus Caroling on Friday before break! Happy Newton's Day! Happy Calculus!







Well, that's all folks!
Learning with Technology, 

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Teaching Math 4R: Finishing Chapters 6 and 7!





Teaching Math 4R: Finishing Chapters 6 and 7! 

preCalculus for Seniors finished Chapters 6 and 7 Trig Review! We talked about Trig Identities and solving Trig Equations. Don't forget about out preCalculus Carols!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week:












mySlideShare SmartNotes
mySage code for MATH4R2012


Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching Math 4H: Continuing Chapter 10!





Teaching Math 4H: Continuing Chapter 10! 

preCalculus Honors for Juniors continued Chapter 10 this week. This unit is about Conic Sections. We talked graphing rotated conics in Polar Mode. Don't forget about our preCalculus Carols!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week:






mySlideShare SmartNotes
mySage code for MATH4H2012!

Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 





Teaching Math 5HBC: Continuing Unit 6! 

AP Calculus BC continued Unit 6 this week. We talked about Volumes of Revolution using the Disk, Washer and Shell Methods. We also started Volumes with Known Cross Sections. Don't forget about our Calculus Carols!

We had a new MCQ Monday this week. We have our first BC Part IA soming up soon!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week:













mySlideShare SmartNotes
mySAGE code for MATH5HBC2012!

Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Friday, December 21, 2012

Teaching Computer Science Honors: TI-83 BASIC Programming Case Study Continued!






Teaching Computer Science Honors: TI-83 BASIC Programming Case Study Continued!

This week we continued working with TI-83 BASIC! We wrote some very BASIC (pun intended) programs dealing with Coordinate Geometry (Slope, Distance) and Series (West, Bagdad). 

I think my students enjoy this topic as they can take these skills to Math and Science class where they use TI-83s or TI-84s. 


We'll take a look at TI-89 BASIC in a future case study. The TI-89 is more like SAGE in that it has a Computer Algebra System built in. Also, TI-89 BASIC uses functions just like Python. 

Here's our ScreenCasts and Code for this week:






mySAGE code for CSH2012!



Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching AP Computer Science: GridWorld Part II!





Teaching AP Computer Science: GridWorld Part II! 

We lost so much class time due to Sandy that I may have to use GridWorld to teach certain concepts that I would teach from our text. We can cover iteration, arrays, inheritance and polymorphism in a GridWorld centric curriculum.

We are done with with GridWorld Part II! This lab has to Inheritance as we discussed how to extend the Bug class! We did BoxBug, SpiralBug and ZBug. We'll finish up Part II with DancingBug right after break.

We are postponing Take Home Tuesdays. We are not ready for Take Home #4 as yet since its about iteration. 

Here's our ScreenCasts and Code for this last week:

GridWorld Part II: pages 10-13



myPasteBin code for APCS2012
myProgramr code for APCS2012

Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Quarter II, Week 6: ScreenCasts, SmartNotes and Code oh my!





Quarter II, Week 6: ScreenCasts, SmartNotes and Code oh my! 

Math 4R: preCalculus for Seniors
Math 4H: preCalculus Honors for Juniors
Math 5H: AP Calculus BC
CSH: Computer Science Honors
APCS: AP Computer Science
CIS(theta): Computing Independent Study
PAEMST: Presidential Award of Excellence
Ubuntu: Linux Install Fun and Games

Above you will find links to summaries of all my lessons for the past several weeks. So, this blog post serves as a Table of Contents for all my other blogs from class!

In addition, CIS(theta) is a summary of my Computing Independent Study class that meets after school like a club. 

PAEMST details my trials and tribulations regarding my 2012-2013 application for the Presidential Award of Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. 

Last, but not least, UBUNTU is a collection of blogs about installing, maintaining and teaching with Ubuntu Linux on my desktop and on my students' desktops in class!

Our YouTube Wednesday this week was a cover of Ton Lehrer's "Chistmas Carol." 



Well, that's all folks!
Learning with Technology, 

Teaching Math 4R: Starting Chapters 6 and 7!




Teaching Math 4R: Starting Chapters 6 and 7! 

preCalculus for Seniors started Chapters 6 and 7 Trig Review! We talked about SOHCAHTOA, Trig Graphs, Transformations and Regression. Don't forget about out preCalculus Carols!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week (YouTube embedding is down):

mySage code for MATH4R2012


Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching Math 4H: Starting Chapter 10!




Teaching Math 4H: Starting Chapter 10! 

preCalculus Honors for Juniors started Chapter 10 this week. This unit is about Conic Sections. We talked about standard form equations for and graphs of parabolas, Ellipses and Hyperbolas. Don't forget about our preCalculus Carols!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week (YouTube embedding is down):





Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching Math 5HBC: Starting Unit 6!




Teaching Math 5HBC: Starting Unit 6! 

AP Calculus BC started Unit 5 this week. We talked about measuring Area between curves and Volumes of Revolution using the Disk Method. Don't forget about our Calculus Carols!

We reviewed another MCQ Monday this week. We have our last AB Part IB this Monday!

Here's our ScreenCasts and SmartNotes for this week (YouTube embedding is down):



5HBC 601 Area Between Curves
http://youtu.be/WA2Kv1oWonI
mySAGE code for MATH5HBC2012!

Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching Computer Science Honors: TI-83 BASIC Programming Case Study!




Teaching Computer Science Honors: TI-83 BASIC Programming Case Study!

We decided to take a break from SAGE and Python and Discrete Math for a couple of weeks. This past week we tried our hands at TI-83 BASIC! We wrote some very BASIC (pun intended) programs to introduce the concept of Input/Process/Output. I think my students enjoy this topic as they can take these skills to Math and Science class where they use TI-83s or TI-84s. 

We'll take a look at TI-89 BASIC in a future case study. The TI-89 is more like SAGE in that it has a Computer Algebra System built in. Also, TI-89 BASIC uses functions just like Python. 

Here's our ScreenCasts and Code for this week (YouTube embedding is down):

TI-83 BASIC: RECT.p83, SQUARE.p83
http://youtu.be/IGd6Rp5jYOw


TI-83 BASIC: PRISM.p83, CUBE.p83
http://youtu.be/YmYDB-4I0r0


TI-83 BASIC: PYRAMID.p83, CONE.p83
http://youtu.be/JYfto0miAhc


mySAGE code for CSH2012!


Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Teaching AP Computer Science: GridWorld Part I!




Teaching AP Computer Science: GridWorld Part I! 

We finally got to start GridWorld! We lost so much class time due to Sandy that I may have to use GridWorld to teach certain concepts that I would teach from our text. We can cover iteration, arrays, inheritance and polymorphism in a GridWorld centric curriculum. I don't usually do this, but the College Board does recommend this method of presenting new Computer Science concepts. I usually use GridWorld to reinforce these topics.

We are done with with GridWorld Part I! This lab has to do BugRunner.java as a "Hello World" program. In other words, we talked about installing GridWorld and what a main class looks like by constructing an ActorWorld object and adding a Bug and a Rock object to that world. We also started Part II discussing BoxBug.java at length!

We are postponing Take Home Tuesdays. We are not ready for Take Home #4 as yet since its about iteration. 

Here's our ScreenCasts and Code for this last week (YouTube embed codes are down):

GridWorld Part I: page 4
http://youtu.be/YPdCbs8lDtc

GridWorld Part I: pages 5-9
http://youtu.be/1Ifs0d5OBhU


myPasteBin code for APCS2012
myProgramr code for APCS2012

Well, that's all folks!
Teaching with Technology, 

Friday, December 14, 2012

CIS(theta) 2012-2013: December Update!

Computing Independent Study 2012-2013

DECEMBER UPDATE

We finally had a chance to meet this month in our new PC Lab! We got pelicanHPC to run 3 cores at about 1.2 GFLOPS. We have AMD Phenom IIs. These CPUs are supposed to be quad-cores. It seems one core is dead. Even so, that's not a bad start. However, we could only run pelican in SMP mode. We could not PXE boot any other nodes. We are also looking into Flame Fractals.
********************

NOVEMBER UPDATE
Sorry to say that we had no meetings this month. I was hoping for 3 meetings, but Hurricane Sandy changed everything! We are in a new room where we may be able to try out liveLinux CD based MPI clusters next month. Stay tuned!
********************

OCTOBER UPDATE #2
That was a great meeting today! We burned 8 CDs of Precise Pangolin and reinstalled the whole back row of our PC LAB/Classroom. Many thanx go to Jeremy for coming to vist today and lending a hand! Here's the steps we followed for a minimal install of the Student Stations (64bit Athlons):
Step1: 
Reboot each Linux box with the current  CD. Answer some basic questions about time zone, userid, passwd, no login on bootup, etc.
Step2:
Reboot each Linux box without the CD. Make sure to configure the gigE cards and proxy server:
IP: 10.5.129.x
NetMask:255.255.0.0
GateWay: 10.5.0.254
DNS: 10.5.0.254
Proxy: 10.0.0.125
Step3:
Configure System Settings as desired (unit circle trig calculator background, no screensaver, etc).
Step4: 
We had to switch Software Sources in the Ubuntu Software Center (edit/source) to Main before this would work:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Step5:
Now, we could use the Ubuntu Software Center to install WINE.
Step6:
I copied my VTI83 and VTI89 directories from my memory stick to the Desktop. Then, after editing preferences to have VTI open with WINE, I configured each calculator.
Step7:
I will edit my /etc/crontabs tomorrow....
Step8:
We haven't decided what else we may have to install (local SAGE server, JRE, openSSH, openMPI,etc). We'll have to think about that! Here's some info on install fests from prior years:
http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/05/2-so-many-hard-drives-so-little-time.html
http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2011/01/then-god-mage-midterm-week-and-saw-that.html
http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com/2010/06/so-many-linux-distros-so-little-time.html
********************

OCTOBER UPDATE
We decided to try out the new Ubuntu Linux 64bit Desktop 12.04 nicknamed Precise Pangolin. So we surfed on over to http://www.ubuntu.com and downloaded the latest ISO. We burned the CD, rebooted a guinea pig box and reinstalled it. This should be a simple procedure as we no longer use dualboot or dualnic boxes. However, we ran into a SNAFU right away! Intranet gigE works fine, but we can't get on the Internet? OOPs, we forgot the network proxy. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

Ubuntu Release History
4.10 Warty Warthog (mammal)
5.04 Hoary Hedgehog (mammal)
5.10 Breezy Badger (mammal)
6.06 Dapper Drake (bird)
6.10 Edgy Eft (amphibian)
7.04 Feisty Faun (mammal)
7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (mammal)
8.04 Hardy Heron (bird)
8.10 Intrepid Ibex (mammal)
9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (mythical beast)
9.10 Karmic Koala (mammal)
10.04 Lucid Lynx (mammal) 
10.10 Maverick Meerkat (mammal) 
11.04 Natty Narwahl (mammal) 
11.10 Oneiric Ocelot (mammal) 
12.04 Precise Pangolin (mammal) 
12.10 Quantal Quetzal (bird) release: 10/18

Guardian, our ssh server, is running 10.04 32bit. Guardian has a dualcore 32bit intel Xeon processor with 2GB RAM and a 512GB RAID drive.

Caprica, our ftp server, is running 10.04 32bit. Caprica has a dualcore 32bit intel Xeon processor with 2GB RAM and a 512GB RAID drive.

Shadowfax, our teacher station, is running 11.10 32bit. Shadowfax has a dualcore 64bit amd Athlon processor with 2GB RAM and a 256GB hdd. We use a 32bit OS here as SmartNotebook doesn't run on 64bit....

Alpha-Omega, our student stations, are running 11.04 64bit. These Linux boxes, like Shadowfax, have dualcore 64bit amd Athlon processors with 2GB RAM and a 256GB hdd.

We are only upgrading Alpha-Omega to 12.04 (or 12.10 if it's available when we upgrade in a couple of weeks). We are also waiting for a hardware upgrade for Alpha-Omega to amd quadcore Phenoms!
********************

SEPTEMBER UPDATE
We had our traditional first organizational meeting:

(1) Wreath of the Unknown Server: 
We visited our first ssh server, Colossus, which is still in the switch room though dormant. I set it up for the first time in 1995 running Slackware Linux. Colossus ran for 12 years straight, 24x7 never having to shut down, reboot or even have anything re-installed! Colossus would not die. We finally just replaced Colossus with a dual-core Intel Xeon box complete with a RAID drive running 1TB. Old Linux boxes never die, they just fade away...


(2) Display Case Unveiled: 
We took down a ton of fractal prints and ray tracings from Room 429 to the 2 cases on the 1st floor near the art wing. We decorated both cases as best we could and left before anyone saw us. Must have been gremlins.

(3) Recruiting 2012: 
We decided that we did not have a good pool of candidates to recruit more CIS(theta) members for this year's Geek Squad, so we tabled that topic.

(4) Planing 2012: 
Next meeting would have been 9/28 but that's Yum Kipur. So, we have to wait another 2 weeks after that for 10/10 at which point Ubuntu Precise Pangolin 64bit release 12.10 Desktop Edition should be available for a mini install fest. After that, we may use bootable cluster Linux CD distros to learn MPI.
==================================
What we are researching I (Sept)
(look what this school did in the 80s): 
Thomas Jefferson High courses
http://academics.tjhsst.edu/compsci/parallel/
Thomas Jefferson High paper
http://www.tjhsst.edu/~rlatimer/techlab07/BWardPaperQ3-07.pdf
Thomas Jefferson High ftp
http://www.tjhsst.edu/~rlatimer/techlab07/
Thomas Jefferson High teacher
http://www.tjhsst.edu/~rlatimer/


What we are researching II (Oct)
(clustering environments): 
Parallel Virtual Machine
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/
openMOSIX
http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/instant_openmosix_clusters.html
Message Passing Interface
http://www.open-mpi.org/


What we are researching III (Dec)
(clustering environments): 
Cluster By Night
BCCD
pelicanHPC
Flame Fractals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_flame


==================================
Today's Topic:
CIS(theta) 2012-2013 - PelicanHPC


Today's Attendance:
CIS(theta) 2012-2013: Kyle Seipp


Today's Reading:
Chapter 3: Building Parallel Programs (BPP) using clusters and parallelJava
==================================
Membership (alphabetic by first name):
CIS(theta) 2012-2013: 
Kyle Seipp

CIS(theta) 2011-2012: 
Graham Smith, George Abreu, Kenny Krug, LucasEager-Leavitt

CIS(theta) 2010-2011: 
David Gonzalez, Herbert Kwok, Jay Wong, Josh Granoff, Ryan Hothan

CIS(theta) 2009-2010: 
Arthur Dysart*, Devin Bramble, Jeremy Agostino, Steve Beller

CIS(theta) 2008-2009: 
Marc Aldorasi, Mitchel Wong*

CIS(theta) 2007-2008: 
Chris Rai, Frank Kotarski, Nathaniel Roman

CIS(theta) 1988-2007: 
A. Jorge Garcia, Gabriel Garcia, James McLurkin, Joe Bernstein, ... too many to mention here!

*nonFB
==================================
Well, that's all folks, enjoy!
Happy Clustering,
mailto:calcpage@aol.com