Blog
Who wants to read my book?
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
So I've been saying for some time that eventually I'm going to want people to read sections of my (hopefully) popular book on cryptography and tell me what they think. And a lot of people have said they are interested, but ... I've forgotten who they are. (Sorry!) So I'm just going to announce it here: if you'd like to help me with my book, I'm looking for people to read sections!
For reviewers, I'm looking for two groups of people:
1) Members of the intended audience. The book is written for people who are not afraid of math but who are definitely not experts in it. You don't need to know anything really more than high school/college algebra, but there's a goodly amount of it. What I want to know from you is whether it's readable, and informative without being overwhelming.
2) People who know something about cryptography. What I want to know from you is whether it's correct.
If you are interested, email or PM me. If you know someone who is interested (especially if I might have talked to them and then forgotten!) tell them to email or PM me.
----Josh
Blog moving
Sunday, November 16, 2008
I'm moving this blog to https://myrhit.rose-hulman.edu/personal/holden/Blog/ --- it's hosted at my home institution, and provides a little more functionality. Sorry for the inconvenience! Hope to see you there!
Grading paper tests using a Tablet key
Friday, November 07, 2008
I've been letting students use laptops (and now tablets) on some exams and quizzes for some years now. But I still require them to copy everything by hand onto a test paper and hand that in. That may change in the future, but for the moment I'm doing that grading on paper.
So in the past what I've done next is to take a blank copy of the exam, fill in the solutions, and then make a fairly detailed rubric describing how I'm going to grade. I sit down with the solution key and the stack of papers, and as I go through the papers I revise the rubric as necessary. When I'm done, the solution keys go into a folder for each course, and eventually into a file cabinet from which they may or may not ever emerge.
I've been thinking for some time that this is a waste of paper and of filing space, and that some portion of this process should be done electronically. Last week I sat down with my tablet and a stack of exam papers and tried it out.
Firstly, I was afraid that the process of reading the key off of the tablet while I was working would be inconvenient, but it turned out not to be bad at all. If I was even a little bit organized in my workspace (and I was only a little bit organized!) I could leave the tablet where it was and shuffle papers around it --- essentially I treated it as a very large and heavy piece of paper. Even with it plugged into a power outlet, that worked fine.
Two unexpected bonuses (besides saving on paper and filing space):
I could easily use multiple colors on my key: one color for solutions, another for point values, maybe another for notes for next time or alternate solutions or things I announced in class because I'd botched them on the test. (Not much of that last week, thankfully!)
I could erase cleanly. What with all of the rubric revisions I do on the fly, this was amazingly helpful. I had no idea how much easier my solution key would be to read just because I didn't have to scribble things out.
OTOH, this week I had a short quiz to grade and I intended to do it the same way. However, my computer wasn't booted up when I started and by the time it had finished booting up I had already written the solutions key out on paper and started using it. So that key stayed on paper. Stay tuned for next time....
Math in Your Hands
Friday, October 31, 2008
I almost forgot: I gave a poster presentation at WITPE entitled "Math in Your Hands: Integrating the Use of Maple with the Collaborative Use of Wireless Tablet PCs" I've posted the poster on Slideshare at <http://www.slideshare.net/joshuarbholden/math-in-your-hands-presentati
Here's the abstract:
This poster is a preliminary report on a Fall 2008 project to explore the use of tablets in calculus classes in order to foster student engagement by incorporating active learning and collaborative activities. The use of tablets can make many improvements in a classroom, but mathematics classes pose special challenges which have not yet been systematically explored at Rose-Hulman. The most difficult of these from a technical perspective is the integration of Maple with other Tablet PC software. This project explores ways to achieve this integration as well as other pedagogical improvements which the use of Tablet PCs could bring to mathematics classrooms at Rose-Hulman.
SLICE
Friday, October 31, 2008
Another piece of software I saw at WIPTE was "SLICE", which is available at <http://slice.cs.uiuc.edu>. SLICE is a competitor with DyKnow and Classroom Presenter, although "competitor" isn't really the right word since SLICE isn't commercial software. It's being developed at the University of Illinois, and the presenter at WIPTE called it "research software", which seems to mean "rough around the edges". It does have some really nice features, though.
Since I'm very familiar with DyKnow and not at all with other similar systems, I though I'd just give some pros and cons of SLICE compared with DyKnow.
Pros:
- Free.
- *Very* user configurable (*if* you know how to code XML and Python).
- "Laser pen" lets you write strokes which disappear automatically when you make the next stroke.
- Buttons to take polls with can be embedded right into a panels, either in advance or on the fly.
- Instructors can establish answer boxes on the panels where students writing can be seen by the instructor in real-time.
Cons:
- Currently lacks many features of DyKnow, including options for synchronizing students with instructor and management of panels. (These could be added by a user, but only if you know XML and Python.)
- Not completely stable (can crash).
- User interface not as polished.
- Not as many options for export of notebooks.