Friday, September 25, 2015

Calculus BC, 2015-2016 September: Hit the ground running!

Calculus BC, 2015-2016 September: 


Hit the ground running!
Welcome back! I hope you had a great Summer. Let me just give a quick summary of week 1. I will usually post similar updates once or twice each month.

We started with CH2 Limits and the Difference Quotient this week. Why? Because I decided to skip CH1 preCalc Review. I want to "hit the ground running" and not spend too much time on review or the early chapters. This way we'll have more time for more challenging topics!

We had a lot of networking and power issues the first week of school, so I'm using last year's screencasts. I already recorded new lessons as we started using the TI-nSpire last year. So, the networking issues didn't affect us as my Calculus students use the PCs mostly for the nSpire emulator on the Desktop.


Week2 = Finishing Limits!
OK, we are sailing right along! We're almost finished with Limits and the definition of the derivative as the limit of the Difference Quotient! 

Week3 = Differentiation Rules!
This week was mostly about some practice. Then we had a review session in the form of a PRE_TEST warming up for our first TAKE_HOME_TEST! We're doing more take homes this year to conserve class time so we have plenty of time for the tougher topics near the end of the curriculum! So, Friday, instead wasting a period on testing, we started UNIT03 on the Algebraic Rules for Differentiation. In other words, we talked about the Product and Quotient Rules. We didn't get to the Chain Rule yet. As you can see, we start the year with a thorough review of AP Calculus AB material!

Week4 = More Differentiation Rules!
We practiced the Product and Quotient Rules. Then we played with the Chain Rule!

Topical YouTubes not for Wednesdays!







YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky!
Grace Hopper on 60 Minutes in 1983!
Tom Lehrer's New Math!
(No class Wednesday of Week 4)

Calculus BC + TI-nSpire CX CAS
SCREENCASTS: 














Well, that's all folks!
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preCalculus, 2015-2016 September: Internet Issues!

preCalculus, 2015-2016 September: 

Internet Issues!
Welcome back! I hope you had a great Summer. Let me just give a quick summary of week 1. I will usually post similar updates once or twice each month.

We started with CH6 SOHCAHTOA this week. Why? Because CC Geometry covered Conics so I'm not doing CH10. Also CC Algebra covers Series so I'm skipping CH12. However CC Algebra does not cover as much Trigonometry as Algebra II & Trig did. So, I'll start with and emphasize Trig this year!

We had a lot of networking and power issues the first week of school, so we didn't get to screencast anything yet. I was going to screencast this class live this year because of all the changes listed above and because we're using the TI-84 Plus C emulator for the first time. We will still use SAGE from time to time, but not as much as in the past. 


Week2 = Finishing Chapter 6!
We focused on SOHCAHTOA. Then we worked on dilation, reflection and translation of the Sine and Cosine functions and their graphs. Finally, we worked on non-linear regression - mostly SinReg. 

Week3 = Chapter 7!
This week we talked about Identity Proofs in Chapter 7. Next week we'll be solving Trig Equations also in Chapter 7.

Week4 = Finishing Chapter 7!
We finished up Chpater 7 by solving trig equations. We also had our SLO_PRE_TEST. Then we had a real PRE_TEST (review in groups) to get ready for our real TEST!


YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky!
Grace Hopper on 60 Minutes in 1983!
Tom Lehrer's New Math!
(No class Wednesday of Week 4)

Topical Youtubes not for Wednesdays!


NEW preCalculus + TI-84plusC
SCREENCASTS:

OLD preCalculus + TI-83
SCREENCASTS: 






Well, that's all folks!
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AP CompSci, 2015-2016 September: Intranet Issues!

AP CompSci, 2015-2016 September: 

Intranet Issues!
Welcome back! I hope you had a great Summer. Let me just give a quick summary of week 1. I will usually post similar updates once or twice each month.

We started with CH1 Simple Main Methods this week. Why? Because I decided to skip HelloWorld. In fact, I flipped the HelloWorld lessons! I want to "hit the ground running" and not spend too much time on the early chapters. This way we'll have more time for more challenging topics!

We had a lot of networking and power issues the first week of school, so we set up a temporary SFTP Server on our intranet. The internet is down, and the intranet in the room was laggy. So, I finally broke down and installed jdk1.8.0_60 on every single PC in the room and stored our work on the local home directory. Clearly, this solution is far from ideal. We usually have a separate SFTP Server the students could access in class and from home. This server is a central location where students can store and execute their programs. Now, if a particular PC goes down, the student can't just move to another Linux Box and login to the server from there. Also, my students are on a public account, so their work is not passwd protected.


Week2 = Faster than a speeding turtle!
I usually start the year with HelloWorld and Chapter 1. This year I skipped HelloWorld to save some class time. Usually Chapter 1 is an intro to programming in a Terminal or Shell, aka Command Line. We usually spend a week or two here. 

Week3 = Slow as molasses!
Due to all our networking issues, we're still going to be stuck in Chapter 1! We finished Chapter 1 on basic Hello World styled programs. Then we started Chapter 2 on constructing and using Object Variables using predefined Classes that come with Java.

Week4 = Some progress?
Tech finally figured out how to add our Ethernet Cards' Mac Addresses to the new Cyber Security Server. So we are getting some more connectivity! Soon we'll be able to print our work in class and login from home! We're almost done with Chapter 2 now.


YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky!
Grace Hopper on 60 Minutes in 1983!
Tom Lehrer's New Math!
(No class Wednesday of Week 4)

Topical YouTubes not for Wednesdays!

AP Computer Science + JAVA
SCREENCASTS: 













Well, that's all folks!
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