Active Calculus is Turning 10

“The days are long but the decades are short.” That’s one of my favorite quotes about the nature of time and life, written in 2015 by a then-30-year-old!

Ten years ago in early August 2012, I wrote this post that presented the first public version of part of Active Calculus.

I had just returned from Mathfest 2012 in Madison, WI, where I met Rob Beezer for the first time. A lot has happened in the decade since:

  • August 2012, chapters 1-4 of Active Calculus Single Variable are made public (PDF)
  • January 2013, chapters 5-8 of Active Calculus Single Variable are made public (PDF)
  • August 2014, first print version of Active Calculus is made available via print-on-demand services
  • August 2015, Active Calculus Multivariable is first made public (PDF)
  • April 2016, I attended the first PreTeXt workshop (then called Mathbook XML)
  • August 2017, Active Calculus Single Variable is made available in HTML format; source files post on GitHub
  • January 2018, a new online home for the books: activecalculus.org
  • January 2019, Active Prelude to Calculus is made public (HTML and PDF)
  • January 2020, the Google group “active-calculus-users” is launched
  • March 2020 to May 2022 …

During most of the pandemic from March 2020 to May 2022, my teaching and administrative duties at GVSU expanded and took priority. Throughout that 26 month period, I basically ignored the plans I had for Active Prelude and Active Calculus. And I missed working on them.

This June, I was fortunate to attend the UTMOST workshop in Ann Arbor that brought together education researchers, PreTeXt developers, and Runestone developers. I’ll write more about that in a separate post soon, but for now I will simply say that I found the workshop invigorating and it made me excited to return my textbooks to a place of high priority in my professional life.

In the next couple of weeks, I expect to post frequently here, on at least the following topics:

  • a reflection on the June UTMOST workshop and some of the future goals for APC and ACS and ACM it has inspired
  • news about a new version of one of the chapters of ACS that I’m working on and expect to make public during the fall semester
  • my hopes for a fall “calc 2 teachalong”
  • a short adoption survey to help me get a better sense of where APC, ACS, and/or ACM are being used
  • an updated post with available ancillary materials

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for your interest in and support of APC, ACS, and ACM.

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