“But you feel dirty …” – why HS kids have to buy TI Calculators

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

In the same way that publishers take advantage of students’ captivity when it comes to needing textbooks, Texas Instruments does the same.  Here’s a fantastic article on the subject that quotes a PA HS teacher who says “But you feel dirty, because you’re telling parents they need to buy a device, and I know I can teach without it.”

More from the article:

“There’s no reason they should cost so much, and it’s shutting out students who can’t afford them. Just this past week, Amazon started selling Internet-capable Kindle tablets for $50 each. But a new TI-84 still runs a retail price of $100, and classrooms that use TI-Nspires (the newest addition to the TI line) are shelling out $140 a pop — about the price of a brand new Chromebook. All for a calculator that is older than the .MP3 file extension.”

Like for-profit textbooks, this is a battle that HS and college faculty need to fight.  There is no reason that TI should continue to cash in on our discipline like this, especially with an outdated technology for which they are overcharging.  As the article says:  use Desmos instead.  Or Geogebra, of course.

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Active Calculus – errata pages

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

An overdue addition for Active Calculus (single) and the addition to AC Multivariable that prompted it:  errata pages for both.

You can find a list of currently identified errors in each text at these links:  single variable, multivariable.

Of course, if you find errors that need to be added to either page, please contact me.

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From my Amazon feed: Stewart’s Calculus for $272.52

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

In recent recommendations from Amazon, based on my prior reading and buying, I got an email suggesting that I buy James Stewart’s Calculus text.  Heh.

The 7th edition, no less: http://amzn.to/1Ly4mWi.  At least you can rent it for $50 for the semester.

These annual complaints about textbook costs are at least getting shorter.

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Screencasts for Active Calculus

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

In a recent post, I highlighted several different resources available to go along with Active Calculus.  I realized yesterday that I omitted a key one, one for which there have been recent additions.

The Math 201 playlist on the GVSU Math YouTube Channel has now been around for awhile, with 92 videos and almost 65,000 views.  It includes screencasts for each section of chapters 1-4 of Active Calculus, and was developed by my colleagues Robert Talbert and Marcia Frobish.

With work over the past several months by GVSU Math faculty David Clark, Shelly Smith, Steve Schlicker, along with more contributions from Robert Talbert and Marcia Frobish, we are delighted to now have a Math 202 playlist on our YouTube channel.  The 202 playlist also has over 90 videos and provides supplemental instruction for nearly all of the sections in chapters 5-8 of Active Calculus.

I want to express my deep thanks to all of these colleagues who have made this fantastic free resource available to calculus students everywhere.

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Resources to complement Active Calculus

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

I’ve recently had interactions with several different faculty who have been working on materials to support those of us who teach from Active Calculus.  This post is a summary of some different things that are (freely) available to users:

Clicker Questions

Eric Sullivan and his colleagues at Carroll College have a full set of clicker questions to go with the activities workbook, which you can find at

http://www.carroll.edu/academics/majors/math/textbooks.cc,

or directly from

http://www.carroll.edu/files/files/academics/math/mathtexts/Activities_and_Clickers.pdf.

Desmos Preview Activities

Serge Ballif of Nevada State College has recently developed Desmos versions of the preview activities in chapters 1-4.  You can access his work at https://github.com/sergeballif/sergeballif.github.io/blob/master/Desmos/DesmosActivities.md.  This is a great new addition that links activities in the text to excellent free technology.

WeBWorK versions of Preview Activities

David Hunter of Westmont College and Branden Stone of Adelphi University have been working on this project; the work for chapters 1-4 is complete, and 5-8 are in progress.  Basically their work allows you to assign each Preview Activity as a WeBWorK problem set, and thus avail students of both accountability and immediate feedback.

From David and Branden, I’ve learned that “in order to see them via webwork, your system administrator needs to update the library and make the `Contrib/` directory available.” You can then find them via this path: /opt/webwork/libraries/webwork-open-problem-library/Contrib/Westmont/ActiveCalculus/

Alternatively, I have a .tar.gz file from Branden that I’m willing to share upon request.  He writes, “you can upload it into your templates folder via the file manager in webwork. The file manager will unzip it during the upload. Once that is done you should be able to see them in the local problems of the library browser.”  I have done this successfully, and am impressed with the option this now presents for previews.

Finally, they note: “If you want to keep up with the progress, you can follow it here:

  https://github.com/djhunter/webwork-open-problem-library/tree/master/Contrib/Westmont“

Activities Workbooks

We have activities workbooks for chapters 1-4 (first-semester calculus), chapters 5-8 (second-semester calculus), and for the new multivariable text, chapters 9-11.

Marc Renault’s Geogebra Applets

These, of course, are present in the text itself in embedded links, but they are a great resource regardless: http://webspace.ship.edu/msrenault/GeoGebraCalculus/GeoGebraCalculusApplets.html

As you prepare for your fall semester courses, I hope that you’ll consider this wonderful collection of free resources, of course along with Active Calculus itself.  As I teach calculus myself in both semesters in the year ahead, I look forward to sharing more of my work and additional resources as they emerge.  I wish all of us a great start to a new term with our students.

WeBWorK exercises, Daily Prep assignments, and labs for Calculus I

From my own work in teaching first-semester calculus, I have collections of WeBWorK exercises, Daily Prep assignments that lead students to read the text and watch video in advance of class, and also several computer lab explorations that use Geogebra.  I’m happy to share any of these upon request; I also have a collection of WeBWorK exercises for Calculus II from another instructor that I can offer.

If you have materials that you’ve developed that you’re willing to publicly share in some way, I would welcome hearing from you so I can add to this list.

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Active Calculus: Single Variable, 2015 Version now available

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

This summer, in addition to working with Steve and David on AC3, I went through the original single-variable version and implemented changes to correct typos, clarify questions, and more in response to over 100 suggestions I received from users.  To all of you who sent those to me:  thank you.

I’m pleased to say that the 2015 version is now available online in PDF, as well as in bound, print-on-demand format from several different booksellers (e.g. Amazon, ).  If you use the Fetchbook link that is posted at the download page, which compares prices across booksellers, note well that you may get pointed to a used copy (i.e. the 2014 version).  If you are sending students to buy the print version for a course this fall, I suggest you provide them a direct link to Amazon or B&N or another seller of your choice for now.  Cost remains under $20 per copy across most sources.

In addition to having fewer typographical errors, in the 2015 version David Austin has contributed new 3D graphics.  These considerably improve the figures in the section on solids of revolution, as well as a few other places in text where I had 3D-ish graphics that merited replacement.

As always, I welcome hearing suggestions from users for changes to future versions, and especially notes about any remaining typographical errors.  You can reach me directly at boelkinm at gvsu dot edu.  If you are interested in the activities workbook(s) or the source code, please email me to request.

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Active Calculus – Multivariable: initial public offering

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

Steve, David, and I are pleased to announce that a first public version of Active Calculus – Multivariable is now available for download.  You can find the file directly at http://gvsu.edu/s/Wb, or from the general Active Calculus site.

If you are interested in the source files, please email me at boelkinm at gvsu dot edu.

Finally, a quick note about the single variable text: at the link from the Active Calculus site above (or directly from http://gvsu.edu/s/xr), the 2015 version with promised corrections and editorial updates is available.  Note well:  from the “buy this book” link at the download page, the 2015 version is not yet available.  I will post here as soon as the print-on-demand 2015 version is available (which I expect to occur within a week).

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AC3 is almost here

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

The multivariable edition of Active Calculus, to which I alluded in an earlier post, is almost ready to be shared publicly.  Steve Schlicker, David Austin, and I have been hard at work for much of the summer, and are pleased to announce that on or around Monday, August 3, we will publish a PDF file for download.  I will add a new post here on the blog that includes a direct link to the page, as well as some other info.

For now, a preview of a few key features:

+ like the original Active Calculus, each section features motivating questions, a preview activity, 3-4 in-class activities, and several challenging exercises

+ also like the original, thanks to David, there are fantastic full-color graphics.  David recently developed a remarkable package for 3D graphics, which enables him to generate .eps figures like these:

fig_11_1_riemann_3_2 fig_11_8_sphere_cone

+ the text will of course be both free and open-source.  The PDF will be available publicly, while the source code will be available upon request.  We will wait approximately a year to do some beta-use, get feedback, and do some further editing before we make arrangements for a print-on-demand option.

I want to especially thank Steve for all of the work that he did to generate an initial draft, which gave us a big collective push and really got this project off the ground.

Interested parties can contact any of the three of us to learn more:  Steve (schlicks at gvsu dot edu), David (austind at gvsu dot edu), or me (boelkinm at gvsu dot edu).  Again, more to follow in the next 10 days or so.

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Active Calculus – download page update

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

I realized today that somehow an older version of my download page had gotten migrated to my website (I think this happened when I did some other updates two weeks ago), so if you have downloaded the text in the past two weeks, you should check that you have the 2014 version.

The 2015 version is nearly ready and will be available no later than mid-August.  The GVSU ScholarWorks site is always the place to find the most up-to-date version: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/books/10/.

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Active Calculus: things in the works this summer

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Matt Boelkins

Having survived both the Michigan winter and the Grand Valley winter semester, I’m excited to get working more regularly on some items related to Active Calculus.  Here’s an overview of my summer projects, two of which serve as a call for contributions from interested parties:

– working on Multivariable Active Calculus

Steve Schlicker, David Austin, and I are working together on a multivariable version of the text for use in the third semester.  It will be similar in style to the single variable AC (each section will have a preview activity, several activities, few worked examples, and a small number of exercises), and it will have some pretty fantastic 3D graphics, thanks to David’s fine work.  Steve has done a huge amount of work taking the lead on the initial draft.  We expect to have a PDF version freely and publicly available sometime in late July or early August.

– 2015 version of Active Calculus (single variable)

Throughout the past year, I’ve been glad to receive editorial feedback (typos, corrections, suggestions) from a variety of different users, and I have saved all of those for implementing sometime this summer.  Once I do so, I will update the PDF with the publisher, and subsequent print-on-demand requests will then have the most up-to-date version.  I plan to have the new version publicly available by late July.

– Answers and solutions to exercises and activities

Many users have made requests for answers and/or solutions to exercises or activities.  Thanks to a bunch of work from the wonderful folks using the text at Scottsdale Community College, I have a draft of typeset solutions to most of the exercises from the first 6 chapters, as well as to some of the activities in chapters 5-8 (I have solutions already for those in chapters 1-4).  I will be working to edit and organize these, as well as to develop solutions to those problems from the last two chapters.  If you have used the text and have any solutions/answers at all to problems in chapter 7 or 8, or to any of the other exercises, I would welcome hearing from you and, if you are willing to share, seeing your .tex code.

While solutions will never be publicly posted, they will be available to faculty upon request.

– Appendix of more routine exercises

One of the criticisms I’ve heard regarding the text is that it’s hard to use without a broader collection of more routine exercises.  This is a project I intend to crowd-source, and will be seeking volunteers to write some straightforward exercises for one or more sections.  I plan to put out a solicitation via email to the list of users I have, but also welcome contributions from anyone interested.  If you have a draft of any exercises you would to contribute for consideration, or would like to participate as an author of new exercises, I would welcome hearing from you.

I can be reached at boelkinm@gvsu.edu.  I look forward to posting some more frequent updates in the weeks ahead as I work on these projects with colleagues near and far.

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