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Short Calculus
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- Constructivist Calculus Sun, 2011-03-06 13:21
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- Week 1: resources Mon, 2011-01-31 21:20
- Meeting times - and initial introductions Mon, 2011-01-31 21:09
Meeting times - and initial introductions
Please follow up in this thread to say what time would work for you for a first meeting, and whether the same time might work for you in each of six weeks of the course. I've suggested 18:00 GMT if we're to meet on a weekday, but can be somewhat flexible about this. I'm also willing to meet on weekends if that works better (15:00 GMT?).
Please make a note here - and perhaps add a few words of introduction. We'll have a chance for more of that in the meeting too :)
By way of introducing myself, I'll mention that I'm currently in a Ph. D. programme studying "problem solving and mathematical knowledge" - a topic that's not unrelated to this course :). I'll share more information about that with you soon.
Best wishes, welcome, and I hope to hear back as to what time and dates will work for you for our first meeting.
Joe
Hi all:
Since no one was actually able to make it to the first meeting on Saturday, I'm not entirely sure what to think. Maybe live meetings aren't terribly important to you, or maybe I just selected a bad time. I think I did the best I could with the information I had. I'm realising that I should have included questions about live meetings in the questionnaire! -- and should probably have made the questionnaire part of the sign-up task. Anyway, we're here now -- so either we should pick a time during the SECOND week that works for everyone, or just agree to scrap the idea of live meetings and emphasise communication in the forums.
What do you think?
My husband had to be away at an unexpected meeting and I had to take my kid places as a result - can't wait for her to drive! Anyway, I would like to have a meeting, but also non-meeting tasks. What is the next thing we are doing?
Hi Joe.
As I had written in my email before I wasn't able to attend the classes at that time because I was at work. Considering various commitments and locations we are writing from I think that emphasizing communication via forums would be a good idea.
Hi all:
Sounds good to me. We *can* try to schedule a meeting for a more suitable time this week, but the main point of the meeting was just to talk about how the course would work. If people are feeling comfortable using the forums then let's go for it! -- The plan for this week is just to find problems having to do with sequences and series and to post/discuss/solve them at http://metameso.org/vanilla/index.php?p=/categories/short-calculus. Other weeks will be similar!
Any Calc book or resource will do. I'm wondering if people might be feeling that that's "too much freedom", worried that they will make a "wrong choice". Please don't worry about these things! Any Calc book from the library is fine, or resources from the internet.
For example, here's a Calculus course from MIT OCW: http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-textbook-spring-... (with videos as well as a fairly famous textbook! - and problems). Note that this book does not begin with "sequences and series" but that's OK - I think there's literally no wrong way to go here (just find what works for you! -- in other words, whatever it takes to get to work on problems!)
Here's another book, on Wikibooks, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus -- which has one advantage over Strang's book, namely that it's easy to edit -- http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Calculus/Limits/An_Introductio... and when you edit it you see the LaTeX code...
Or if you're in the mood to *buy* a cheap book, I've always enjoyed the Schuams series...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schaums-Outline-Calculus/dp/0070419736
You can get that sort of book at any B&N or what have you.
Feel free to add more links to resources if you find things worth sharing!