CAROL'S BLOGBlog is short for weblog (weBLOG).Check here to see the latest information about my site (and, occasionally, about my life in general). Monday, September 6, 2010 Updated Identifying Inequalities as True or False and Bigger, Smaller, Greater, Lesser. (Finally, I managed to get TWO done in the same day! Yeh!) School starts for lots of people tomorrow, so we'll see what happens with my hits! Sunday, September 5, 2010 Updated Divisibility Equivalences. Decided to advertise for a math-on-the-web job in my header. Let's see! Saturday, September 4, 2010 Updated Adding and Subtracting Simple Fractions with Variables. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Just found out that I didn't win the Tech Award. Well... it was a nice rejection letter! Friday, September 3, 2010 Updated Adding and Subtracting Fractions. Expanded/improved the concept discussion a bit. Added links to supporting web exercises. I'm noticing that sometimes my pages are loading slowly, and I'm worried that people are leaving without seeing what the site offers. It appears that my sitemeter may often be the weak link, so I've contacted them to see if upgrading to a paid version would improve the load time. Perhaps my number of hits (1000+ per day) has reached the point where the free version is no longer appropriate. Thursday, September 2, 2010 Updated Practice with Factors. Expanded/improved the concept discussion a bit. Added a bit more variety to the web exercise. Changed to radio buttons for recording the yes/no answer, instead of typing it in. Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Happy September, everyone! Updated Renaming Fractions with a Specified Denominator. Expanded/improved the concept discussion. With the school year starting, hits are really picking up! Had one of my highest days ever yesterday, with 1338 visits. Actually went to check my site meter this morning, and got a message that “usage exceeds capacity”—this could be a problem. A good problem, though! We're getting vacation rental requests for next summer, which is superb. This “income solution” may actually allow me to do math-on-the-web as my career! Woo hoo! (Of course, the only minor problem is that I don't get to live/work in my own home; but my living needs are pretty simple... a tiny little space that's all my own is enough...) I'll finish updating everything; then complete the high school curriculum; then go back and incorporate loads of JSXGraph stuff in the high school curriculum; then on to early college-level—oh, the plans I have! Also updated my Monthly Statistics for August. Tuesday, August 31, 2010 Updated Finding Least Common Multiples. Monday, August 30, 2010 Updated Practice with Multiples. Sunday, August 29, 2010 Updated Renaming Fractional Expressions. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Saturday, August 28, 2010 Updated More Practice with the form a(b/c). Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Now, heading out for a long walk to celebrate my birthday. I'm just going to stroll and think about how wonderful my life is, as I turn 52 years young! Friday, August 27, 2010 Spent the morning working on the Hill Cottage Notebook, both to help our renters, and to give prospective renters a better idea of everything we offer. Updated Practice with the form a(b/c). Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. This one took a while, because the coding was a bit different; I had to figure out what I had done! Thursday, August 26, 2010 Tried Google Ads again for about 4 hours, but (as usual) just can't stand the look of it. (And, the ads "pop out" of the table structure in Internet Explorer, so it looks really awful.) I wouldn't mind having some advertising if it was something I believe in: math toys, logic puzzles, Design Science, WolframAlpha, things like that. If only I could contract individually with appropriate advertiser(s) to get some steady income, that would be great. Maybe once my hits (optimism!) are in the many thousands per day, then I'll have some leverage to do this! Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Updated Multiplying and Dividing Fractions. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Added a bit more variety to the exercise. There are ten different problem types: coded a worksheet feature so that users can request more than ten problems, and get “even” practice with all types. For example, if 24 problems are requested, you'll get two sets of all 10 problems (each in random order), plus an additional 4 problems chosen from the 10 available types. Had a typo—an “m” where I was supposed to have an “n”—which took me forever to find. Sigh. Tuesday, August 24, 2010 Updated Determining if a Product is Positive or Negative. Monday, August 23, 2010 Updated Finding Reciprocals. Added more variety to the web exercise; changed to horizontal fractions for the worksheet, instead of diagonal fractions. Sunday, August 22, 2010 Updated Fractions Involving Zero. Added a bit more variety to the web exercise; changed to horizontal fractions, instead of diagonal fractions. Saturday, August 21, 2010 Updated Locating Fractions on a Number Line. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Friday, August 20, 2010 Updated Rewriting Fractions as a Whole Number plus a Fraction. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Thursday, August 19, 2010 Updated Significant Figures and Related Concepts. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Improved the exposition and coding, and inserted appropriate commas in large numbers. I also created a JSXGraph exploration of precision versus accuracy (which I'm very pleased with). Haven't done any JSXGraph stuff for a while now, so it took me a bit to get back into it. Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Updated Scientific Notation. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Improved the exposition and coding, and inserted appropriate commas in large numbers. My “life project” has settled, so I should now be back to (about) one update per day (except possibly on renter transition days, when I clean, clean, clean). Monday, August 16, 2010 Updated Getting Bigger? Getting Smaller? (Direct and Inverse Variation). Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. This one took a while, just because of the sheer number of cases (64). Saturday, August 14, 2010 Well, I didn't test all my updated files, but I checked enough so that I'm confident there won't be any major problems updating to MathJax 1.0. (I did need to delete my "InvisibleTimes" elements in MathML; version 1.0 doesn't seem to recognize these.) So, as of 1:00 PM EST, MathJax 1.0 is live on my server! Be sure to let me know if you experience any problems. Updated Solving for a Particular Variable. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Friday, August 13, 2010 Spent the morning playing with my new Hoover WindTunnel Bagless Upright vacuum cleaner. I love it! It's powerful. I really like not having to buy bags. Very easy to empty the dirt bin and clean the filters. It's very heavy, so you wouldn't want to be lugging it upstairs and down often—but I like an appliance that “feels solid”—and this definitely does. I'll primarily use it on the main level of our home—our old vacuum can be kept upstairs. I fell in love with this vacuum while visiting in Boulder, Colorado, and decided it would be my next vacuum. I've used canisters my whole life (and I vacuum a lot—it's how I keep my life in order!) so this is a radical departure for me. It will take some time to see, long-term, how it works for me. All indications thus far are that we'll get along just fine! The new version of MathJax (1.0) is released! Boy, am I behind the ball—it was released on August 4th, and it's now the 13th. (My life project has me a bit distracted.) I've downloaded it, but I want to test it on all my updated files, before I actually upload the newest version to my server. Woo hoo! Go MathJax! Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Updated Undoing a Sequence of Operations. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax, and improved the appearance of the mapping diagram. I've had several tutoring sessions now with kids who are vacationing at the Hill Cottage—ages 5 and 8—great fun! (Each vacation rental comes with one free hour of tutoring or "fun with math" each day!) Sunday, August 8, 2010 Updated Using Mathematical Conventions. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Thursday, August 5, 2010 Updated Solving Simple Sentences By Inspection. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. (My “life project” is going well enough that I hope to update a web exercise at least every 3 days.) Tuesday, August 3, 2010 Updated my new monthly web site statistics. Definitely on (the normal) “summer mode”—hits are down. Saturday, July 24, 2010 I have a major “life project” that will pretty much consume me for at least the next three weeks (and perhaps beyond), so my progress on the web exercise updates is going to be slowed pretty significantly. I'll try really hard to keep chipping away at them, though. Friday, July 23, 2010 Updated Going from an Expression to a Sequence of Operations. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Thursday, July 22, 2010 Updated Going from a Sequence of Operations to an Expression. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Wednesday, July 21, 2010 Updated Reading Set Notation. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Tuesday, July 20, 2010 Updated Introduction to Variables. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Monday, July 19, 2010 Updated Interval and List Notation. Changed from MathML to TeX syntax. Sunday, July 18, 2010 Updated Introduction to Sets. Ended up changing from MathML to TeX syntax. Also, added questions on subsets to this web exercise. Friday, July 16, 2010 Updated Changing Percents to Decimals. Added quite a bit of variety to this web exercise. Thursday, July 15, 2010 Updated Changing Decimals to Percents. Got a cord of word delivered—I'll get my upper-body exercise stacking it! Wednesday, July 14, 2010 Updated Multiplying and Dividing Decimals by Powers of Ten. Improved the web exercise: more variety in notation, inserting commas (where appropriate) in worksheet answers. Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Updated Changing Decimals to Fractions. Added a lot more variety to this web exercise. Evidently, the spacing problems below are browser-related problems in rendering the MathML, not MathJax problems. The recommendation was that I could "work-around" by putting this code in my config file:
TeX: {
Macros: {
times: '\\;\\unicode{xd7}\\;' }
}
but it didn't work; perhaps I need the newest version of MathJax to recognize this "Macros" section.(I'm waiting for the 1.0 release before I re-download.) I've left the code in place, though, so when I update MathJax, perhaps it will then work. Also, I've decided that I'm going to "live with" the less-than-perfect spacing around the commas in IE. Monday, July 12, 2010 Updated Multiplying By Powers of Ten. Part of the reason that these updates are taking so long is that I'm not merely switching to MathJax and changing the code to XHTML/CSS. I'm also re-reading with “fresh” eyes, improving exposition, and sometimes improving the exercises. For example, in this newest update, I wrote a little macro to insert proper commas (in appropriate groups of three) in the worksheet answers. There is an inconsistency with how space around the \times symbol is treated: in Firefox (using MathML), no extra space is inserted around the symbol, which is not desirable. There is also inconsistency with how the TeX code $1{,}324$ is treated: in IE with MathPlayer, extra space is inserted after the comma, which is not desirable. I have reported these inconsistencies on the MathJax form. Sunday, July 11, 2010 Updated Identifying Place Values. Did my normal Sunday cleaning at Nielsen Lane (to help out my Mom and sister). Also visited my Dad (which I do every Sunday and Wednesday) at Fairview Commons; we finished the Sudoku we've been working on for a while! Saturday, July 10, 2010 Updated Average of Three Signed Numbers. Went blueberry picking yesterday, and picked 13 pounds of berries. Made a gigantic batch of jam (about 4 pounds of berries makes about 9 cups of jam); also froze two gallon bags for putting on cereal throughout the year. Yum!! Thursday, July 8, 2010 Updated Average of Two Signed Numbers. Tuesday, July 6, 2010 Updated Mixed Addition and Subtraction of Signed Numbers and Writing Fractions With a Denominator of 2 in Decimal Form. Monday, July 5, 2010 Updated Deciding if a Number is a Whole Number, Integer, etc.. I've spent many hours clearing the path to the lake—it looks lovely! First, spent hours pulling up weeds; then, raked the entire path, trimmed back branches, cut down the "pricker-bushes". Saturday, July 3, 2010 Updated Divisibility. These "early" web exercises seem to take me much longer to update than I think they should; and I think I've figured out why. I didn't have a good "template" in place for the early exercises, so all the coding is a bit different. I have to look carefully at my code to figure out what I did! I've also got raspberries picked, crushed, and frozen for two more batches of homemade jam. This will make four batches—hopefully enough for an entire year of renters! Friday, July 2, 2010 Put in my June monthly statistics. Have made two batches of raspberry jam—the raspberries are early this year! I want to give each renter a homemade loaf of bread and a small jar of homemade raspberry jam. Also cleared the entire path down to the lake; it was very overgrown. Wednesday, June 30, 2010 Updated Multiplication. Also getting close to having the house and lawn ready for July renters—I've been a cleaning and weeding fiend! It's amazing how a yard and gardens can "go to seed" (both figuratively and literally) in two months! Monday, June 28, 2010 Updated Basic Addition Practice. Since I've already updated most of the "popular" web exercises, I'll now just go in order through Algebra I, then Geometry, then Algebra II. The summer "lull" has definitely begun, as most public schools are now out for the year. Hits are down considerably (which is normal). This actually makes summer the perfect time to do my updates, so I (hopefully) won't change the user experience mid-stream for anyone. Sunday, June 27, 2010 I arrived home yesterday, after 500 miles. YEH!!!! I'm home!!! 2812 miles, total, from Tucson, Arizona to Monterey, MA. I was welcomed home with a traffic jam off the turnpike in Lee; must have been Tanglewood traffic heading into Lenox. I know that, eventually, I'll forget all the pain and discomfort of this trip, and just remember it as a glorious, worthwhile thing to have done. Julia is settled into her new graduate school life. I now "know" her place, and Antonio's place, so I have a mental image when I talk to her. All good things. Two months well spent. (And, I got a FANTASTIC start on my website update while I was alone there.) Lots of work to do here to get ready for renters; it's really important to me that I present my home to each new renter in PERFECT condition. I'm also getting back on my at-least-one-web-update-a-day schedule; this is each day's #1 priority. It's SO GREAT to be back home! Friday, June 25, 2010 On Thursday, I got off late (about 8AM), so I was only able to do about 575 miles, from Brinkley, Arkansas to Bristol, Virginia (I40 again, then onto 81N). Today (Friday) was only about 350 miles: from Bristol, VA to Harrisonburg, VA... but about 200 of it was along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was spectacular! I stopped and hiked to the top of Sharp Top Mountain (about 3 miles total); at the beginning of the hike, my right shin was incredibly tight (surprise, surprise... I've been doing a bit of driving, and I don't have cruise control). After the hike, though, I felt WONDERFUL. Just what I needed after over 2000 miles of driving in 3 days. I drove to the north end of the parkway, then took 64W and got back onto 81N. Wednesday, June 22, 2010 Well, the air conditioner in Julia's apartment wasn't working well, so I took it as a sign—I'm heading back East (back home). Did 699 miles on Tuesday (Tucson, AZ to Vega, TX: I10E, I25N, I40E). Did 688 miles today (Vega, TX to Brinkley, Arkansas: I40E). My Honda Civic just hit 175,000 miles, so the time has long since past that she deserves a name—Hermione, it is! I'm averaging between 35 and 40 miles per gallon, so go Hermione!!! My car air conditioning isn't working (this seems to be a theme). I feel like I've been in a sauna for two days now. With the window open, it's like a hot hair dryer blowing on you. With my barely-functioning "air conditioner," it's like a warm hair dryer blowing on you. With nothing on, I just can't breathe—so I'm going for the warm hair dryer. About 1400 miles more to go; I'll do part of it on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which will be slow, but beautiful. This is serious business, driving cross-country. Needless to say, I'm not going to get many updates done this week! Before I left, though, I did finish updating Expressions versus Sentences. This one (both a timed AND a concept exercise) also took a long time. Sunday, June 20, 2010 Updated The Addition Property of Equality a couple days ago. Then, a couple busy "life" days: picked up Julia and Antonio at the airport—they were so happy to see the kitties! They look great! We spent a day together walking around Boulder. Julia and I got a new kid's book for our collection: "the Seeing Stick" by Jane Yolen. What a lovely book—the color and texture in the pages slowly emerge as the young princess gets closer to her "new sight". (By the way, I got a 10+ mile day!) Then, flew back to Tucson, Arizona yesterday (Saturday). This morning, I'm groggy, sore, a bit disoriented... and consequently my crosswords score was HORRIBLE! (Sigh... Karl will clobber me today.) That's okay—there will be days like this. I'll get to work on another update, and feel better! Thursday, June 17, 2010 Finally finished the update of Addition of Signed Numbers. The good news: after that (looonnng) one, the update of Subtraction of Signed Numbers went really fast! Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Aargh. Fought all day with the update to "Addition of Signed Numbers" and still haven't finished. This is the first updated exercise with BOTH a timed exercise AND a concept exercise, so I had to adjust the CSS information to allow for two forms on the same page. It's taking a long time. Tuesday, June 15, 2010 Updated Writing Quadratic Equations in Standard Form and Perimeters and Areas of Similar Polygons. Monday, June 14, 2010 I am keeping Davide Cervone (lead developer of MathJax) apprised of browser-specific incompatibilities in representations. His knowledge of typographic issues, ability to locate bug references, and suggestions for work-arounds are fantastic. Here are two recent issues: Firefox in Mac has trouble with stretchy overbars, like for line segment representations. This is not a MathJax issue, but instead a MathML issue: I'm committed to using MathML capability where it is available, so I'll live with it. I have, however, switched to numeric entries as per this email correspondence:
[email correspondence with Davide Cervone, June 2010]
This seems to be a Mac-specific bug in Firefox's native MathML renderer. See here for details.
Furthermore, MathPlayer was unable to render the "equivalence" symbol (\Longleftrightarrow) in PC-mode on Mac, with IE, via VMWare Fusion; I ended up
coding it as "\Leftarrow\kern-.15em\Rightarrow" (again following Professor Cervone's lead), which gives excellent representation in all situations.
< more details > If you use ¯ rather than ‾ you should be able to get stretchy overbar in Windows versions of Firefox (but not Mac versions). Note that the MathML specification suggests that you NOT use the entity names, but rather use the numeric references, since the entities cause problems in a number of situations. Also, updated Translating Simple Mathematical Phrases. Finally, I've decided to offer one free hour of tutoring per day, for people who rent my home. This won't start until August, since I won't be back there until then. Sunday, June 13, 2010 Updated Quadrilaterals. I've worked for many hours on a "random quadrilateral generator"; it's tricky. Once you have three randomly-generated non-collinear points, there's only a certain region in which the fourth point can lie, for the computer "polygon" method to correctly draw the resulting quadrilateral. (The order that the points are connected matters!) Along the way, I wrote a function that "fills" an angle (there doesn't appear to be such a feature built-in to JSXGraph). I needed this to help me indicate to the user an acceptable region for a fourth point. I abandoned this approach due to slow performance—but it was another great JSXGraph learning experience. I've settled on a less-random (but MUCH easier) quadrilateral-generating algorithm. I still don't want any three points that are even close to collinear; if the random generation isn't quickly coming up with a good set of points, then I present the user with a special case of a randomly-generated square, rectangle, trapezoid, parallelogram, or rhombus. I definitely don't want my users to experience a freeze-up (on a MAC, the "spinning wheel of doom"). Saturday, June 12, 2010 Updated Basic Properties of Zero and One. Ended up switching this to TeX format, because there was relatively little MathML. I'm really enjoying yoga; there was a Rodney Yee DVD in the apartment here, so I decided I'd give it a try. I've been doing it daily for a little over a week now, and I'm benefiting physically, mentally, and spiritually. In particular, I get my BEST crossword scores when I do them immediately after yoga! And, my back has never felt this good, even though I'm working at the computer (with a non-ideal chair) for 10–12 hours per day. Friday, June 11, 2010 Updated Two Special Triangles. By the way, if you ever absolutely need an "original" version, then it is available by appending "OLD" to the end of the file name, e.g., two_special_trianglesOLD.htm. When using my "MathJaxText()" function for JSXGraph, I MUST remember to put the "preview" in front of any math, or else the math is not processed in Internet Explorer. With this exercise, I learned how to use arcs to create the little "angle" symbol for labeling degree measures in triangles. Eventually, I'll create a set of useful functions to automate these kinds of things for me. (Of course, JSXGraph may also evolve to include some of these time-saving features.) Thursday, June 10, 2010 I haven't updated my blog in a few days, because I've been so busy! I've updated: Area Formulas: Triangle, Parallelogram, Trapezoid (Check out the JSXGraph base/height explorer!) the Multiplication Property of Equality Factoring Simple Expressions Writing Fractions in Simplest Form Put notices on my "video" pages about updating the site. Added in a "JSXGraph" column in my summary of Updates to MathJax, so it's easy to see, at-a-glance, how many files incorporate dynamic graphics. I was not successful in having more than one JSXGraph drawing board in Probability Tree Diagrams, so I kept only one board, and used SnapZ Pro X to take pictures of the other desired configurations. Take a look at the beautiful graphics! Play with the random probability-tree generator! This is my first real use of MathJax inside JSXGraph! Monday, June 7, 2010 Another VERY VERY important and exciting day! I got MathJax working INSIDE JSXGraph! Indeed, when you click on "Do this!" in this file, these are divs created on-the-fly, which contain randomly-generated text and MathJax! The math educational world is going to have to bow down to MathJax + JSXGraph! (By the way, the math is meaningless. I was actually working on a function to create probability tree diagrams, and I decided that I wanted the probabilities correctly displayed on the branches... and it led me to this discovery.) Times-they-are-a-changing, for math-on-the-web. Woo hoo! Saturday, June 5, 2010 VERY important day! Put my first JSXGraph graphics in a web exercise: check it out! And, I had WAY too much fun with dyamically-generated right triangles here; it was a great first learning experience for JSXGraph! Friday, June 4, 2010 Updated Multiplying and Dividing Fractions with Variables. Also updated my worksheet style, so that it looks good with less individual-file tweaking in a wide variety of situations. Went back to all the "already-updated" files and put in the new worksheet information. I'm not happy with the look of the minus (opposite) sign before a horizontal fraction. I ended up coding it as "<mtext> - </mtext>", which seems to give the best appearance across browsers. If I use "<mo> - </mo>", then the symbol is WAY too long. Also, I'm not happy with the division symbol between horizontal fractions in Firefox; it's way too close. It looks beautiful in all other browsers, though, so if I "tweak" it for Firefox, then it will be too far apart in the others. Thursday, June 3, 2010 Implemented a button for practicing a particular problem type. Updated both the Pythagorean Theorem and Introduction to Function Notation to include this button. Also updated Probability Tree Diagrams. This one took a lllooonnnggg time, but I'm pleased with the result. I did some revisions of the concept discussion, and also did quite a bit of reformatting of the MathML. Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Two more files updated: Calculating Percent Increase and Decrease (yet one more time–I keep adding in new stuff!) and Introduction to Function Notation. Also updated the GeoGebra worksheet on this latter exercise. Monday, May 31, 2010 Davide Cervone, the lead developer of MathJax, was able to solve the problems with Internet Explorer; the dynamic math in the div, and the dynamic worksheets. He's fantastic!! I've adjusted the code on the files that I've updated so far. Now, my code doesn't have ANY browser-specific hacks. Yeh! Good day! Also passed the 200,000 mark on my Sitemeter today. I hit 100,000 on November 22, 2009. So, this second 100,000 didn't take very long! Sunday, May 30, 2010 Another 6 hour snafu. Things weren't working, and I spent hours trying to debug. Wasn't sure if I had inadvertently inserted a character somewhere in my JavaScript code, or what. Ends up that I had "merely" failed to upload my auxiliary JavaScript file after adding one new variable; and that single undefined variable wreaked havoc. The problem, at this very-early-MathJax-stage, is that I don't have sufficient confidence about what is correct code and what isn't, so it's harder for me to locate the problems. New things take time. Thursday, May 27, 2010 Spent half of yesterday and half of today trying to get the dynamic worksheet to work in IE; no success. I did, however, discover lots of ways that DON'T work! Except for the dynamic worksheet, everything else works fine. So (for now) I'm going to put a note on the worksheet button saying "To create and print a worksheet, use any browser EXCEPT Internet Explorer". This way, I'll only have to maintain one page for each web exercise; I'll re-name the new MathJax page with the original file name. I'm deciding on all my CSS style tags—while I'm updating to MathJax, I'm also updating to XHTML/CSS. Also, I'll make sure that all my links are relative, so I can potentially (when I'm done) create a CD of my entire math offerings to be used offline. I also updated my common header to gain an extra "link" slot. In the process, I ended up messing up my entire site for about an hour... it was a stupid mistake on my part. Sorry about that! Wednesday, May 26, 2010 Finally added in the Work Problems exercise to the Algebra I curriculum. This was an experiment with a totally new look-and-feel, and was the first major MathJax test. Check it out! I also updated Calculating Percent Increase and Decrease; now, you can specify how many worksheet problems you want, and whether you want extra space for each. Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Argh. There are days like this. Spent all day (yet again) fighting with moving the focus in forms. Theoretically, it should be extremely easy; but different browsers act differently when "tab" is pressed (which is common), often ignoring what I'm telling them to do, and doing what they want instead. You won't believe the somersaults I've tried. I finally came up with an interface that gives consistent performance and provides a reasonably good user experience for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Check it out: Multi-step Exponent Law Practice (I also had to fix the MathML on this exercise; it was gorgeous in Safari, but deficient in Firefox and Chrome.) Monday, May 24, 2010 Updated the Pythagorean Theorem to MathJax. It took a LONG time (hours) to upload the new MathJax version to my server (about 6 hours). I can upload a compressed folder MUCH faster, but there doesn't seem to be any way to unzip it at the server level. Sigh. Also updated Percent Increase and Decrease so that it works in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera (no MathJax needed on this one). I've made the following decision: when someone comes to one of my original pages, I check to see if they have IE. If not, then they're automatically re-routed to the MathJax page (it should be seamless). If they have IE, they stay on the same page. If they don't have MathPlayer, then they get an alert box to download MathPlayer. I can't seem to get stuff working properly with MathJax in IE, so I'll probably have to keep my original pages intact. Sunday, May 23, 2010 Almost done transforming my "Pythagorean Theorem" exercise to MathJax. I've been away from this for a few weeks, so it has taken me a while to get back into things. I've decided that if there isn't too much MathML in an exercise, then I'll just convert to TeX; makes it a lot easier to understand the source code. I'm also creating a "flowchart" to help me to efficiently transform my exercises, so hopefully I'll speed up pretty soon! Sunday, May 16, 2010 We're in Tucson, Arizona; 2635 miles of driving. Not trivial. Parts of I25 in New Mexico are gorgeous. I'm anxious to get settled, and get to work. Wednesday, May 5, 2010 Spent the last couple weeks doing a THOROUGH cleaning/organizing/packing-up of the house, to ready it for rental. Take a look! I impressed myself with packing the two cars to head out to Arizona with Julia—she has a LOT of stuff!! I'm hoping that house rental will be a sustainable income solution, even in the off-season. My home is lovely, I keep it meticulously clean, and I'm happy to share it with others in order to sustain my ability to work on my web site. After I return from Arizona, then I can move up to Karl's house while my own home is rented. I'll take care of all the cleaning, mowing, garden-tending, answering renter's questions, and so on. I'm even thinking of eventually offering homemade meals—instead of a "bed-and-breakfast" this could be a "home-and-harvest"! I'm DYING To get back to work on my web site. MathJax isn't even out of the beta stage yet, though—it's due for its "1.0" release in June. So, it probably makes sense that I wait for the first "real" version for the major transitioning of my site. So—be patient, Carol! Very soon, you'll be hunkered down in Arizona with nothing to do but work on your web site for 12 hours each day! Woo hoo! Saturday, April 24, 2010 Finally finished my application for the Tech Grant. Yeh! Busy week; big life changes for my parents, and all the children have been helping. So, I've gotten virtually nothing done on my web site for the week. Also, I need to pack up the house to rent it for the summer—heading out west with my daughter to help her get set up for graduate school. I haven't had a long-distance car ride in a long time, so it should be fun. I'll bring my computer, of course! Tuesday, April 13, 2010 Got my first MathJax revision up! If you go to my Multi-step Exponent Laws page in any browser other than Internet Explorer, then you're automatically redirected to the MathJax page! And, if you happen to come to the MathJax page in Internet Explorer, then you are redirected back to the original page (which requires MathPlayer), since the worksheet doesn't work in IE. Friday, April 9, 2010 I've been really busy, so haven't updated this blog in a bit. Lots to report. I've had several VERY fruitful emails with Davide Cervone, the creator of jsMath. I had coded my newest web exercise, Work Problems, in jsMath, and it works beautifully in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera. (Unfortunately, the poorest user experience is in Internet Explorer; the math is very slow to load, and continually "rewrites" as you scroll the page, making it almost non-functional.) Work Problems was designed as a full-scale test of jsMath, and also presents a new "look-and-feel" for the page design; it's written in XHTML, and properly separates content and presentation, using CSS. The ability to use TeX-like syntax for the source code makes my work MUCH easier than using the extremely-low-level MathML syntax. Well, it ends up that Professor Cervone is the lead developer for MathJax, which is an open source, Ajax-based math display solution designed with a goal of consolidating advances in many web technologies in a single definitive math-on-the-web platform supporting all major browsers. Professor Cervone also led me to JSXGraph, which is a cross-browser library for interactive geometry, function plotting, charting, and data visualization in a web browser. So, after learning about MathJaX, I created a version of Work Problems in MathJax, which also implements dynamic graphing capabilites with JSXGraph. Ends up that MathJax is even EASIER to use than jsMath, because I'm able to use the "dollar sign" syntax with the dynamic math (Javascript-generated), whereas in jsMath I seemed to have to write out spans/divs with class='math'. So—WOO HOO!!!!!—it seems that I now have ALL THE TOOLS I need to get back to serious work on expanding my offerings! Lots of the stuff that's missing is missing for a reason—I couldn't do it correctly without dynamic graphics. Of course, MathJaX isn't "officially" released yet—it's in beta—but the beta versions seem to work amazingly well. (Ends up that Robert Miner of Design Science is also involved in this MathJaX project, so I'm not surprised that it's so wonderful; it has fantastic people working on it.) By using MathJaX, I can now reach the wider audience that I've been wanting for a decade, in a way that makes the best use of MathML NOW, and allows for the future use of MathML when browsers are ready (so I don't have to feel like I'm "giving up" on MathML). These last couple months have been incredibly exciting for the future of my site. On a different note, I've started working on a K-12 Math Taxonomy (for my OpenVES work). Hours of web searching produced almost nothing, and I now understand why—it's hard. After several "false starts" I've decided to take a "language-based" approach in my classification scheme, using the "nouns" (expressions) of math and the "sentences" (equations, inequalities, theorems) as the over-arching themes. Things seem to be falling nicely into place, so I'm encouraged that I may have hit on the "right" organizational scheme. Finally, I'm working on the essays for my Tech Awards 2010 application. This takes a lot of time. You can't say everything, and you can't say everything first. I've finished the first two essays: Problem Identification and Description of Technology Application. Writing these has been a good opportunity to try to give a "snapshot" of what my site is all about in 10,000 words or less. You have to view efforts such as this with a broader purpose, because there's only a pie-in-the-sky chance of actually winning. (But, if I *do* win... and if I *do* win the one-in-five monetary award—oh dear, that's a lot of "ifs"—then I can actually keep working on my site AND eat, stay warm, and pay the bills at the same time!) Saturday, March 27, 2010 Spending a week doing a thorough look at the release of the National Common Core Mathematics Standards, and comparing them to the Massachusetts Math Standards (and supplement). Sunday, March 20, 2010 Whoa. It's harder to try and design for both PC and MAC, Firefox, IE, Safari, and Chrome. I'm running into LOADS of issues with stuff handled slightly differently in different platform/browser environments. It's important that users can navigate the online exercises easily—pressing tab and enter, moving the focus in appropriate ways; this seems to be one area where there are the most browser differences. Also, I'm having issues with how the CSS is interpreted. My code validates in XHTML, so it's not a problem with not having the "correct" code. Sunday, March 7, 2010 I've been working really hard on a new web exercise, "Work Problems". It's a totally new design; a bit more mainstream. It has unlimited guided practice, "talking" you through the solution steps. It uses jsMath, so it should be available to all mainstream browsers and platforms. I should have it up soon. I'll advertise it on all my pages (top banner), and hopefully get some good feedback on this new format. Monday, February 22, 2010 Finished the cataloguing of my utility functions—a collection of 71 JavaScript functions that I've written over the past decade to use in my web exercises. I divided them into two parts: Randomization functions (26) and Expression Generators (45). For each function, I did the following:
Thursday, February 18, 2010 Finished the big job of updating my Map of MCAS Objectives to Fisher Web Site; next—filling in the identified gaps! I'll very likely be using jsMath for my new web exercises; check out this jsMath Test page. Also, freerice.com has expanded their offerings to now include basic math and multiplication tables, so I've added these two links to my "Fun Stuff". Thursday, February 11, 2010 One of my users brought to my attention that some of my exercises did not include links to the text exercise solutions. (These links were only available from the right-hand column of the Table of Contents.) I've corrected this situation. Thanks! Sunday, February 7, 2010 I am filling out and improving my Map of MCAS Objectives to Fisher Web Site; since I initially created this document, I've written a lots of new exercises that needed to be incorporated. Wednesday, February 3, 2010 In doing some OpenVES work, I discovered that the entire first parts of my "Introduction to Exponential Functions", "Introduction to Logarithmic Functions", "Equations of Simple Parabolas", "Basic Arithmetic with Matrices", "Arithmetic with Complex Numbers", "Introduction to Logarithms", and "Properties of Logarithms" (all in the Algebra II curriculum) had been inadvertently deleted... have no idea how long ago this happened. Sigh. I must have had a period of time that I was really out of it! Went to a back-up disk and restored them. Sorry to everyone who may have been affected by this mistake on my part. Saturday, January 30, 2010 Have been checking out jsMath as a way to expand my browser audience. It works well for static content in web pages, but I haven't yet gotten the dynamic part (writing exercises into floating frames) to work. Using it would mean "giving up on" MathML, so I'm definitely torn. But, I feel that it's worth some serious consideration. Just got notice that my online Algebra I was reviewed by Curriki.org and received the highest possible rating of 3–Exemplary. Yeh! You can read the review here. I'm also currently reading A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing (a Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives) to better enable me to construct good math assessments. And, I'm reading through this PISA study (Programme for International Student Assessment). It affords a view of 15-year-old student capabilities, across nations, as seen through the lens of mathematical literacy as defined by the PISA 2003 mathematics framework and the resulting assessment. I hope, again, to use this information to help me to write high-quality math assessments. Wednesday, January 20, 2010 Have been sick for a couple days with chills, fever, nausea, diarrhea. Yuck. Now, I'm going through each of my web exercises and summarizing each type of question (each "case") in a commented section before the JavaScript begins. I'm also locating (and marking with a named anchor) each part of the text that relates to a given case. Monday, January 18, 2010 Submitted my self-nomination for the 2010 Tech Awards. It's unfortunate that this nomination coincides with the sudden decrease in my daily hits; wish I could figure out what has happened! Wednesday, January 13, 2010 REALLY weird. My hits are WAAAAYYYY down. They were low over the Christmas break (as usual), but they bounced back at the beginning of January to near-normal levels. But now, this week, I'm only getting a few hundred visitors per day. Has Google completely changed where it sends people for math? Have I done something that got the search engines upset?? Is something not working on my site, that I'm not aware of? It's a mystery to me! Friday, January 8, 2010 Updated multiplication.htm to include content and questions on the Associative Property of Multiplication. Thursday, January 7, 2010 Paid Bravenet the $39.95 to upgrade my Guestbook page to PRO so that I could get rid of the branding and annoying advertising. I've had more comments in the last month than I've had in years, so this forum does indeed seem to be working to get some feedback on my site. Yeh! Also, I got a free "talking avatar" (limited to 150 audio streams per month) with the upgrade; I had a fun time designing it and recording my welcoming message. Check it out! Monday, January 4, 2010 A new year! A new decade! And, this year started with a blue moon, which is quite rare. I've now archived 2009 (see bottom of page), so this page is short again (for a while)! Spent the day researching OpenVES.org (an open virtual educational space) and jsMath (a method of including mathematics in HTML pages that works across multiple browsers and platforms). Along the way, I learned about IMS GLC (Instructional Management Systems Global Learning Consortium); they're working on standards that enable the development and adoption of innovative technologies to improve and transform education worldwide. I will submit a self-nomination for the Tech Awards 2010; since I'm now trying to make a living at math-on-the-web, the recognition and/or monetary award would be really, really helpful. Blog Archive, 2009 Blog Archive, 2008 Blog Archive, 2007 Blog Archive, 2006 Blog Archive, 2005 |