Recommended tutorials for students

[Kathy_Bautista]

Over the past few years, we've created many tutorials to help get students up to speed using Mathematica. Faculty love them, too, because these tutorials save them the time it would take to introduce Mathematica in class.

A new semester is starting in many parts of the world, so I wanted to pass along a few of the most popular tutorials, which I invite you to share with your students (or even check out for yourself).

"Hands-on Start to Mathematica" is an online series of free training videos that introduce key features of Mathematica. The first screencast in the series can get your students using Mathematica (and more importantly, really understanding it) within 20 minutes. Part 2 expands upon many of the concepts introduced in Part 1 and provides a lot of helpful, time-saving tips.

If you haven't already, be sure to check them out here.

"Hands-on Start to Mathematica--Part 1":
English: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... ndsonstart
Spanish: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... t_spanish/
Japanese: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... nstart_ja/

"Hands-on Start to Mathematica--Part 2":
English: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... startpart2

Another resource that you might find useful is the "M10: A Student's First Course in Mathematica," a self-paced training course providing step-by-step instructions on the basic features of Mathematica for students. Through the included videos and practice exercises, students will learn how to navigate the user interface, build calculations, create graphics and dynamic models, work with data, and more.
http://www.wolfram.com/services/educati ... s/m10.html

If you currently recommend these tutorials to your students, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Do you include links to these tutorials in your syllabus or on your class or department web page?

Have these tutorials been useful to your students?

Are there any others that you highly recommend instead of, or in addition to those above?

What tutorials would you like to see available in the future?

-Kathy

[telefunkenvf14]

A few thoughts:

1. I like to show screencasts in class during the first week and then assign them (and others) as homework; i.e., students must watch and reproduce them on their own, and then hand them in electronically via Blackboard.

WARNING: If you're on a campus without a site license and are requiring students to purchase or rent MMA, do NOT make the mistake of telling your students to download a trial version!!! They won't be able to save, thereby amplifying first week chaos!! (this is pretty annoying... tempting you to demonstrate sloppy workarounds, which only confuse beginners, such as copying and pasting to a text editor, or teaching students how to save 'programmatically', or to Export[], etc.) What you should do is tell students to go ahead and purchase immediately. If they decide not to stick with the class they can get a refund (within 30 days, I believe).

2. When showing screencasts the first week, I noticed they would often crash (the screencasts, not the students) in class. Presumably this was due to the large number of instructors all around the country who were simultaneously accessing the same resources, at the same time. It would be VERY helpful if you could allow instructors to download and host these on campus; it's easy to do this on Blackboard. (I tried using VideoDownloadHelper to 'rip' the videos onto my machine, but couldn't get this to work. Please, set your promotional materials freeeeee.)

3. Students are often fearful of math. To combat this, mix in some fun stuff. This eases worries and encourages play. Some of my favorite quirky examples come from Theodore Gray. His cometary is hilarious (in a nerdy, excited kind of way) and you can tell he's having fun. Exactly the right message.

Bouncing Expand: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screencasts/bouncingexpand/
Breakout:http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screencasts/breakout/ (Can someone get me the code? Students have requested it... OK, I wanna play it too! )
See the 'Neat Examples' page for others:http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/#NeatExamples
Finally: somewhere in my collection I have a long interview where he shows off his iPad 'Elements' app and explains how MMA fit into the project. There's a related post on the Wolfram Blog. Seek and ye shall find.

-RG

[Kathy_Bautista]

What you should do is tell students to go ahead and purchase immediately. If they decide not to stick with the class they can get a refund (within 30 days, I believe).

Yes, this is correct. So students can always get a refund if they drop the class within that 30 days...although depending on their major and future courses, they may want to keep Mathematica anyway.

It would be VERY helpful if you could allow instructors to download and host these on campus; it's easy to do this on Blackboard. (I tried using VideoDownloadHelper to 'rip' the videos onto my machine, but couldn't get this to work. Please, set your promotional materials freeeeee.)

We've been discussing this, so hopefully this is something we can offer in the future.

Breakout:http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screencasts/breakout/ (Can someone get me the code? Students have requested it... OK, I wanna play it too! )

It looks like this may have been originally created by Mathematica user Luc Barthelet. I'll check if Luc can provide us with a copy of this notebook.

Finally: somewhere in my collection I have a long interview where he shows off his iPad 'Elements' app and explains how MMA fit into the project. There's a related post on the Wolfram Blog. Seek and ye shall find.

For those of you who are interested...

Here's the Popular Science article, which includes a link to the YouTube video.
http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2 ... gical-apps

And here's a Wolfram Blog post about how Theo used Mathematica to create videos of the elements.
http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/06/29/the- ... thematica/

Enjoy!

-Kathy

[telefunkenvf14]

It looks like this may have been originally created by Mathematica user Luc Barthelet. I'll check if Luc can provide us with a copy of this notebook.

Any word on the Breakout notebook?

-RG

[Kathy_Bautista]

It looks like this may have been originally created by Mathematica user Luc Barthelet. I'll check if Luc can provide us with a copy of this notebook.

Any word on the Breakout notebook?

No luck yet, but I'm still trying...

-Kathy

[telefunkenvf14]

No luck yet, but I'm still trying...

-Kathy

That's my mantra!

-RG

[Kathy_Bautista]

"Hands-on Start to Mathematica--Part 1":
English: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... ndsonstart
Spanish: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... t_spanish/
Japanese: http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... nstart_ja/

Just a quick note to let everyone know that the "Hands-on Start to Mathematica--Part 1" screencast is now available in Portuguese:
http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... nstart_pt/

-Kathy