AScienePad (Math TiddlyWiki)

Writing and Displaying Math Symbols and Graphs on the Web Please sign-on to a computer, and navigate the following website: http://robertfant.com The presentation will begin shortly. Welcome and Thank You for Joining Us!

Click on the “ Technology In Mathematics Education ” Conference link.

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Click on and download the PowerPoint presentation. You will view this and follow along with me, downloading other materials as needed.

Presented by: Robert Fant Spearville High School USD 381 Assisted by: Josh Renner – Sophomore, Algebra II Brittany Habiger – Freshman, Geometry Kyle Hovey – Freshman, Algebra 1 the TiddlyWiki On Mathematics Steroids

Credits

A Little History of “Math on the web”

Operating with ASciencePad (selecting a browser)

Obtaining Your Own Copy of “ASciencePad”

About the “TiddlerWiki”

Creating Math Documents with “ASciencePad”

Publishing Your Wikis on your intranet

Agenda

Publishing Your Wikis on the Web

Credits:

Jeremy Ruston – Developer of the TiddlyWiki

Dr. Peter Jipsen – Chapman University

David Lippman – Pierce College at Ft Steilacoom Co-Developers of the plugins that provide the math extensions

History: 1. A sheet of paper (with math symbols) was sent by fax ! (Sender and receiver had to have a fax machine.) 2. Scan a handwritten sheet, create a graphic file, and attach it to email. (Graphics files can be huge thus, bandwidth problems.) 3. Create nice pictures like this with the keyboard characters. 4. We next developed better math picture tools like MathType, but they’re still pictures (gifs). ( Sure don’t want to make a mistake. )

The Browser: Option 1) Internet Explorer with the following plug-ins:

MathPlayer is a free plugin for InternetExplorer that allows this

browser to display MathML.

SVG viewer is a plugin that allows a user to easily view AsciiSVG graphs within a webpage.

Option 2) Mozilla FireFox – All these capabilities are built-in. NOTE: Document “save” abilities are not guaranteed. Please download and install the Mozilla FireFox browser at this time.

Obtaining ASciencePad Although an incredible amount of work has gone into the creation of ASciencePad, it is offered as a FREE download, to the mathematical community.

Go through Dr. Jipsen’s webpage (and read about some of his other work), or

Take the direct route (right to the download site.)

Open-Source Ya Gotta Love Please click on “direct route,” and let’s get you a copy of the software. We want to extract the files to a folder on the DeskTop , (for easy deletion).

About the TiddlyWiki Honestly, if it were not for the “math” capabilities, I wouldn’t get excited about the “TiddlyWiki.” Though it’s kind of cool in it’s own right, it is just another blogging / journaling tool. However, it does have math capabilities so, lets go over a couple of ideas:

The “TiddlyWiki” is a wiki made up of a bunch of ________.

Tiddlers

A “Tiddler” is just a small “chunk” of information.

All Tiddlers can be opened and closed quickly.

All Tiddlers can be edited easily. They can also be “programmed” for different uses.

Explains everything, Huh?

Creating Math Documents This is where I get to walk around and drink coffee. Please allow my students to help as much as possible. They have worked very hard to learn this tool. In fact, they’re possibly better at it than I am. SUGGESTED STARTING POINTS:

Change the page name, “Site Title” Tiddler

Change the “Site SubTitle” Tiddler

Create a New Tiddler

Creating Math Documents Please allow my students to help as much as possible. They have worked very hard to learn this tool. In fact, they’re possibly better at it than I am. LET’S DO SOME MATH:

Create your first graph.

Experiment on your own.

Write your first equation:

0 y 0 x 5 -4 -2 1 3 -5 -5 -3 -1 2 4 -5 -1 4 -4 1 -5 2 -2 -3 3 5

Publishing Your Documents (Intranet) Assuming you want your wiki, or student’s wikis to be viewed by “others,” you will need to publish them in a location that is accessible, but not editable . These details will need to be worked out with the assistance of your network administrator. 1) All students have access to their own private disk space on our server. They have downloaded their own copy of “ASciencePad” onto this disk and this is where they do their work. 2) When the student is satisfied, the final step is to save a copy of their wiki onto the High School’s “ shared ” drive, in the “ASciencePad” folder. NOTE: I have downloaded a copy of the “ASciencePad” files onto the shared drive therefore the students only need to send a copy of their wiki document. How we do it at Spearville:

Publishing Your Documents (on the Web) Document creation is the same as on the previous slide. Students create on their hard-drive space, send final product to a “shared” drive. Step 2 – After all the students have gone home, make a copy of all the wiki documents and send them to your web server folder. This folder must have all of the “ASciencePad” files in it as well. Step 3 – (One Time Effort), Create an index page, listing all students and make the appropriate hyperlink to their wiki pages. CONGRATULATIONS! Your students are now, published web authors.

Other Sites of Interest Thank you very much for attending this session. All materials seen can be downloaded / viewed from my website, http:// robertfant.com If you were at all intrigued by what you saw today, these other sites may be to your liking as well.