Writing and Displaying Math Symbols and Graphs on the Web

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

• Click on the Technology In Mathematics
  Education Conference link.

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

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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
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Agenda

• 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

• Publishing Your Wikis on the Web

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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

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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.)
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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.

NOTE Document save abilities are not
guaranteed.
Option 2) Mozilla FireFox All these
capabilities are built-in.
Please download and install the Mozilla FireFox
browser at this time.
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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.
Ya Gotta Love
Open-Source

• Go through Dr. Jipsens webpage (and read about
  some of his other work), or

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

Please click on direct route, and lets get
you a copy of the software. We want to extract
the files to a folder on the DeskTop, (for easy
deletion).
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About the TiddlyWiki
Honestly, if it were not for the math
capabilities, I wouldnt get excited about the
TiddlyWiki.
Though its kind of cool in its own right, it is
just another blogging / journaling tool.
However, it does have math capabilities so, lets
go over a couple of ideas
Tiddlers

• The TiddlyWiki is a wiki made up of a bunch
  of ________.

• 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.

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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, theyre 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

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

• Create your first graph.

• Experiment on your own.

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Publishing Your Documents (Intranet)
Assuming you want your wiki, or students 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 Schools 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.
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Publishing Your Documents (on the Web)
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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.

• Tim Fahlbergs CoolSchoolTools Tim is an
  expert in various math technologies,
• including mathcasts (math movie making),
  E-Instructions CPS, and ExamView.
• These tools should have every math teachers
  attention.

• Free Math Help Another of Tim Fahlbergs
  projects (started Oct. 06).
• After joining, anyone can ask a math question and
  someone from around the world can
• respond. Though it is not a new idea in itself,
  the focus will be placed on giving
• answers via mathcasts (movies), or some other
  dynamic or interactive way.
• I will be participating in this as much as
  possible.