Many of you who already own Mathwright Author 2000,
or have ordered the Mathwright:
My Way CD
at our online BookStore may be interested
in some authoring tips that can get you started creating your own Teaching/Learning
environments.
After you step through the tutorial, you will have created several books
that will illustrate the wide variety of options open to you, but you may still
be uncertain where to start. Perhaps
the most important decision to make before writing a WorkBook is this:
What story do you want to tell?
Your story will have two components.
There will be the screen
design, that is,
the appearance and placement of objects (graph windows, displayed mathematical
formulas, with pictures and text, pushbuttons, textfields, checkboxes, wallpaper,
hotspots, and so on) on the individual pages.
And
there will be the dynamic
interactions.
These will be the scripted scenarios that will give your reader the opportunity
to explore and ask questions as she reads your story.
The latter might simply be textfields where she enters a function definition
or variable value, palettes where she chooses colors for drawing graphs or other
sorts of pictures, matrix windows where she enters exact or floating point values
in a matrix, or graph windows, where she selects a point or drags an object
to its starting position.
Interactions
of this sort must be scripted, so that the system makes the appropriate
response. These scripts,
written in MathScript, are what distinguish Mathwright from all
other programs. They give each
WorkBook its dynamic character.
Now, where do these scripts come from?
Well,
our first tip is this:
A]
Use or modify scripts that others have already written in Mathwright Library
WorkBooks. You may already know of WorkBooks that do what you want, but
if you do not, then just write to us at the
Library, telling us what you have in mind, and we will suggest WorkBooks or
individual scripts that can help you. After a while, you will be comfortable writing your own from
scratch. You may be surprised how
many ideas for interactions authors have contributed in the last 5 years.
And
what about screen/WorkBook design? Often,
the organization of a WorkBook, its navigation from page to page, whether it
includes audio or video cues, the choice of colors, pictures (wallpaper) and
other decorations make a large difference to the reader.
It is important that she not get lost.
So a technique that brings her back to a “Home Page” such as
the one used by Mike Pepe in Parametric
Curves may be what you want. Or
you may prefer a linear sequence through the WorkBook as Jim Swift does in Periodic
Functions. Another approach
is to develop a navigation tree organized by topics as Samad Mortabit did in
his Discrete Dynamics.
Our next hint is this:
B]
You may use a prior WorkBook as a model for your navigation and screen design.
Simply replace the content with your own, but keep the page structure.
Again, just write to us at the Library
for ideas.
How
large can a WorkBook be? There
are really no limits. The Gravitation
CD is a 55-page WorkBook, but much longer WorkBooks are possible, depending
on your content. And concerning
content, our computer algebra system (and its companion Expert Systems) can
support the usual tasks: symbolic differentiation, simplification of expressions,
solution of equations and even exact rational complex arithmetic and abstract
algebra (See for example: Cubic Equations,
or better, the Lava Cardano WorkBook.)
But they surprisingly do the most good behind the scenes, checking for
equivalent forms of correct answers as in Quadratic
Functions or Work Problems.
C]
For exact rational algebra in your WorBook, just place: “load algebra”
in your WorkBook Script.
Another
powerful technique for helping students visualize processes and constructions
is sprite
animation.
Sprites are little graphical objects that move around in a window and
illustrate various dynamics, such as a Model
Solar System, gradient
dynamics, Logo graphics, elastic
collisions (pool), or a Lunar Lander,
for example.
D]
You may find the sprites you
want in the directories of Library WorkBooks.
Just copy them to your own directory, and they will be ready to import
and use. You may also design your
own Sprites in Mathwright itself, or in any paint program that makes bitmaps.
Finally,
for now, we explain how you make your WorkBooks available to your readers.
When you create a WorkBook in Mathwright
Author 2000
(which is also supplied on the Mathwright:
My Way CD)
then if you save it as an .imt file, anyone who has the Mathwright Library Player
on his machine can read it directly. Since
the Library Player is freely downloadable over the web, you may assume your
students have it. Or, if you want
your students to have access to it in a laboratory classroom, then you may install
it from the Mathwright: My Way CD.
E]
You may make your WorkBooks available to students simply by placing your
WorkBook directory where they can read it using Mathwright Library Player.
There is no need for Webapp. They
simply open Mathwright Library Player and browse for your WorkBook file.
These WorkBooks can of course also be delivered over the web, as long
as the student has the Library Player on his machine. In this way, you may easily support your web course with interactive
content. They may even download
mwl.exe from your website if you prefer.
Most of our authors are college or university teachers. We all know that the most important stages in a student’s
mathematical development are met long before she enters college.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to educational technology today is to
use it effectively to help young learners form clear ideas about
mathematical constructions, models, and conventions.
We believe that, while “drill and practice” has a role to play,
it is not the most promising role for computer learning environments. Most of us know how engaged our children can be in playful
game-like environments in which they willingly lose themselves, and accept the
rules of the game. These games
(such as Myst, or Super Mario Brothers) are virtual realities that somehow capture
their imagination…and their attention.
Imagine how powerful a learning environment would be if we could capture
their attention in this way with environments in which they solved problems,
and along the way, learned about measurement, and geometry, and about arithmetic,
and algebra.
WorkBooks like Lemonade Stand
and Roam (which were written by college
students) are a first step in the direction of exploring some of the real potential
of this new medium. Other books
like Heron’s Formula, or Boats
attempt the same thing at a precollege level.
In
an effort to interest Precollege classroom teachers, Home Schoolers,
and Students to try their hand at authoring, for the next few months,
we will be offering the Mathwright: My Way CD
and Mathwright
Author 2000
at a sharp discount for those groups.
The price of Mathwright: My Way is now $150.00 to anyone in the above
categories, and the price of Mathwright Author 2000 is $100.00.
We
hope that many of our new authors will remember the Library and will contribute
some of their work in the future so that it can be available to the general
public.
James E. White, Editor
If you came here from the old building,
