On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:36 AM, john_perry_usm <john.pe...@usm.edu> wrote: > > Hi, > > I have a "calculus with computers" course. The biggest suggestion I > have is from the student's point of view--most students I've known > don't care whether a package is open source vs. whether it's closed. > They do like the free aspect, but what they care about most of all is,
You teach at West Point? If you tell your students that the special "student version" price of Matlab costs more that a month's salary (assuming USMA cadets make the same as the USNA mids), and that the program Octave does almost exactly the same thing (using almost exactly the same syntax) but is *free*, they will care. The software business model most companies use is to keep their code secret so they can charge you for it, therefore open source implies free. My experience has been that if the concept of open source is explained and motivated properly (which I am *trying* to do), then students will care. I believe that we (we meaning those teaching math using math software) do a bad job of explaining the benefits long-term and short-term of the software we make our students use. Since students are generally immature, they don't usually see the long-term benefits of one choice or another, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make them aware of it. They can't do the right thing if they don't even know what the issues are. > "How do I use this thing?" I personally would move pp. 9-12 to the > beginning, then reorganize pp. 1-8 under the heading, "What's so > special about Sage?" or something similar. Good ideas. I was thinking of moving some things around. However, this is an "invitation" not a tutorial:-) Still, I agree some rearrangement might provide good motivation. > > Some things are repeated. For example, p. 1 lists several packages > that are included as part of Sage; these are repeated on p. 5. > > My personal experience with OpenOffice is that while it "can" read > Microsoft Office formats, they often come out looking bad. PowerPoint > presentations are the worst, but the department here also sends out > the Faculty Annual Activity Report in Microsoft Word format, and I'm You have to FAARt too? Sorry, couldn't resist:-) > glad one person here has written a LaTeX version, because OpenOffice > doesn't display the FAAR properly, or a lot of other files besides. It > might be better to soften the claim in the second sentence of the > third footnote to something like, "To a limited extent, it can read > and write to Microsoft Office formats as well." Thanks for these too! I haven't had problems with OO but if others do, it is a good idea to soften this a bit. > > The quotes are great, especially the Torvalds quote. > > john perry > > On Jan 17, 4:50 pm, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi: >> >> I posted a draft of a hopefully motivating and low-level paper >> athttp://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wdj/teaching/calc1-sage/an-invit... >> It is designed to fit into a book on calculus with Sage, as a >> introductory chapter. I assume the reader is assumed to know little or >> no calculus but does >> have an interest in computers. Basically, if you have a "calculus with >> computers" >> course at your school, the student in that course is what I'm trying >> to think of. It needs >> to be fleshed out in spots but I thought I'd ask for suggestions >> before going further >> in case it seems like a bad direction to some people. >> >> Any suggestions? I would like to add a quote on how open source >> programs often are higher >> in quality (latex is an example), one that goes beyond the Okounkov quote, >> but >> I can't remember where I saw one. Does something like that ring a bell >> with anyone? > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-edu@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-edu+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
