Sunday, March 20, 2016

Confessions Of A Presenter At LIMACON 2016: Houston We Had A Problem!

Confessions Of A Presenter At
LIMACON 2016:
Houston We Had A Problem!


You know I'm meticulous about my tech. So I got to my room half an hour early and had everything working. I set up my PC and Projector, Media Center and Projection Screen, my mic, my screencasting software, my pdfs and my mp4s, ... everything! 



Then, right after I started my session, everything fell to pieces! The PC couldn't handle rendering my video as it ran out of hard drive space after only 5 minutes of recording. When I tried to show a video from YouTube, the speakers died! I tested all this stuff before the attendees arrived. I was good to go. IDK what happened!


Not to worry, I covered everything I had to cover in my presentation and then some! In fact, I think the presentation was a great success. I just wanted to record it for YouTube and I wanted to jazz up the presentation with some Calculus Filks. 


Maybe I'll rerecord it sometime this week (I did, see videos above). 


The irony of the situation is that I had my brand new Samsung Galaxy NotePro 12.2" Droid Tablet with me (instead of my laptop). Given enough time, I could have mirrored the PC Desktop to my Tablet over WiFi controlling everything from my Tablet like a remote SmartBoard and recorded the whole thing right on the Tablet. 


However, I did not want to waste the attendees' time with all that, so I skipped all the tech except for my primary focus: teaching Calculus with http://sagecell.sagemath.org 

I even sang when the audio went out. 

In retrospect, I should have set up the Tablet in the first place.

BTW, I've been attending LIMACON at SUNY Old Westbury since 1986 and presenting since 2001.


Here's some related talks


Here's my SAGECELLs


Here's my Handouts













Here's the FILKs and YouTube Videos!



Well, that's all folks,
A. Jorge Garcia
Applied Math, Physics and CS
2015 NYS Secondary Math PAEMST Nominee


Teaching with Technology, 
PasteBin SlideShare 
Sage Ebay
TpT

preCalculus 2015-2016 March: Polynomial Equations and Inequalities!

preCalculus 2015-2016 March

Polynomial Equations and Inequalities!

We spent the last several weeks on CH04. In this chapter we emphasized the solutions, both algebraic and graphical, of Polynomial Equations with all Real Coefficients. 

We learned about the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, the Rational Roots Theorem and the Remainder Theorem. We even extended our factoring skills to include SOX: Sum Of Two Cubes and DOX: Difference Of Two Cubes. 

We ended the unit with a discussion of Polynomial Inequalities and Sign Line Tests.

YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
2000 Year Old Computer?
What does PI sound like?


NEW preCalculus + TI-84plusC
SCREENCASTS:






Well, that's all folks!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Calculus BC 2015-2016 March: Power Series!

Calculus BC 2015-2016 March

Power Series!
UNIT11 was all about MacLaurin and Taylor Expansions. First we generated series for e^x, sin(x) and cos(x). Then we talked about the Ratio Test For Absolute Convergence, Intervals of Convergence, Centers of Convergence and Radii of Convergence. We talked about getting new series from old series by substitution, integration and differentiation. We even generated series by long division and Geometric Expansion. Last, but not least we created a Taylor Series for ln(1+x) and (1+x)^p. Don't forget the Alternating Series and the LaGrange Error Terms!

The next 3 Socrative Mondays will be about BC Part IA and IB MCQ practice. Then the last 3 Mondays are MCQ Monday Mock AP Exams.


YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
Who invented Calculus?
What does PI sound like?

NEW - Calculus BC + TI-nSpire CX CAS
SCREENCASTS






Well, that's all folks!

Friday, March 11, 2016

AP CompSci 2015-2016 Feb+Mar: Iteration Statements Done!

AP CompSci 2015-2016 Feb+Mar

Iteration Statements Done!
We finally finished looking at For and While loops. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far with Midterm Week and Snow Days getting in the way! So, we spent February and part of March on this topic too.

One of the first lab projects we did involved a loop calling nextPower() from a PowerGenerator class we wrote. The main() method had a loop generating a table of powers from base^0 to base^11 given any integer base from args[0]. We ran it for powers of 2, 3, 5, etc. As soon as we hit base 10, we went over maxint. So, we changed the return type of nextPower() to long. 

We finally had to figure out that a signed int has a maximum value equal to 2^(number of bits)-1. So, the int type has a maxint of 
2^31-1= 2147483647 but long integers have a maxint of 2^63 - 1 = 9223372036854775807! 

We even talked about the difference between 1bit, 2bit, 4bit, 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit, 128bit and 256 bit microprocessors. Gotta get me one of those 1bit PCs!


YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
What's the CooKoo's Egg Virus?
What does PI sound like?

AP Computer Science + JAVA
SCREENCASTS





Well, that's all folks!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

preCalculus 2015-2016 Feb+Mar Logarithms and Exponentials!

preCalculus 2015-2016 Feb+Mar

Logarithms and Exponentials!

We spent all of February a a bit of March on CH05. In this chapter we emphasized the concept of solving equations algebraically using inverse functions. So, we talked about inverse functions algebraically and graphically. We focused a lot on logarithms and exponentials. We talked a lot about domain, range, translation, dilation. We played around with simple interest, discretely compounded interest and continuously compounded interest. Finally, we tackled exponential growth and decay word problems and non linear regression. We even started talking about asymptotes and limits!

YOUTUBE WEDNESDAYS: 
2000 Year Old Computer?
What does PI sound like?


NEW preCalculus + TI-84plusC
SCREENCASTS:











Well, that's all folks!