sage-moodle integration

[herlimenezes]

Hello!
This is my first message to group. So let me introduce myself.
My name is Herli Menezes and I'm a Physics teacher at a big
University in Brazil, and begin to use Moodle as a Distance Learning.
It would be nice is we could integrate Moodle with Sage, in order to
be able to teach physics and math interactively. I have never used
SAGE, my only experience with mathematical and algebraic computational
software is with MAPLE. I would like to use and integrate SAGE with
another open source software like MOODLE.

Herli Menezes

[David Joyner]

Hi Herli. There are people working on this, but off the top of my head
I am not sure if they are members of this list or not. If no one replies
within several days, I'll dig up emails and try to get your question to the
right people or else send you their addresses. You might also search sage-edu
and sage-support archives for "moodle".

[mabshoff]

On Feb 15, 6:17 am, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

> Hi Herli. There are people working on this, but off the top of my head
> I am not sure if they are members of this list or not. If no one replies
> within several days, I'll dig up emails and try to get your question to the
> right people or else send you their addresses. You might also search sage-edu
> and sage-support archives for "moodle".

Mike Hansen has played with this and he is a member of this group, so
once he is back up you can expect an answer by him. Overall we would
very much welcome an integration with MOODLE, but so far no one has
actually submitted a patch to do so. Maybe you can describe what needs
to be done in that direction or point us to some links/documentation
from the end of MOODLE in case you are familiar with it.

Cheers,

Michael

[leonardo parada]

mmmm...interesting...do you have any idea?
what do you want do for example?

2009/2/15 mabshoff <mabs...@googlemail.com>

--
Leonardo Parada
Licenciado en Ingenieria Acustica
Ingeniero en Acustica (c)
http://leonardoparada.cl

[Robert Bradshaw]

I actually wrote the whole http API with Moodle in mind. However, I
don't know the Moodle framework or source (or time to learn it yet)
so didn't take it any further. If there's someone out there who knows
Moodle I would be very happy to work with them for a Moodle-sage
plugin, as I know the Sage side fairly well.

- Robert

[Marshall Hampton]

I am interested in this too, although the way my university sets up
its moodle server I can't really hack it at all. I would be interested
on working on a concrete project - what is a simple goal to get
started?

Marshall Hampton

On Feb 17, 6:08 pm, Robert Bradshaw <rober...@math.washington.edu>
wrote:

[David Joyner]

This sounds very interesting to me. If you can get something going,
that would be great!

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 6:06 AM, Minh Nguyen <nguye...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,

>
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Marshall Hampton <hamp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am interested in this too, although the way my university sets up
>> its moodle server I can't really hack it at all. I would be interested
>> on working on a concrete project - what is a simple goal to get
>> started?
>

> I'll be working on a proof-of-concept integration with Moodle. For
> this, what I have in mind is that, say, one is managing a maths course
> and wants to create a set of self-tests for students to take as the
> course progresses. A self-test in this respect is meant to help
> students grasp concepts introduced in classes/lectures. So a "typical"
> test might contain a number of multiple choice questions---other types
> of questions are possible like multiple selection, free-form response,
> etc. but let's keep it simple for now. I know this can be done using
> HTML, PHP, MySQL without involving Moodle, but please bear with me for
> a moment, since I'm describing a simple prototype of a Sage/Moodle
> integration.
>
> OK, back to our typical multiple choice self-test. For concreteness,
> let say our test is on basic calculus, in particular differentiation.
> A multiple choice question on differentiation might ask a student to
> find the derivative of f(x) = x^3 + x, for example, and underneath the
> question is a choice of 4 possible answers, one of which is the
> (best/correct) answer. As a first direction into this Sage/Moodle
> integration, assume those questions are static, by which I mean that
> every student is presented with the *same* question and the *same* set
> of possible solutions. Then a basic, crude prototype here is to figure
> out how to get Moodle to communicate with Sage in order for Moodle to
> make use of Sage's maths capabilities.
>
> Let me explain further what I have in mind. Going back to our example
> of the function f(x) = x^3 + x, say the student is asked to find the
> derivative of f(x). A set of 4 multiple choice answers might be:
>
> Question 1
>
> [ ] f' = 3x^2 + 1
> [ ] f' = 3x^2
> [ ] f' = x^2 + 1
> [ ] f' = x^2
>
> Say the student has answered all questions on a test and now submits
> the responses for grading. Upon submitting the answers, Moodle would
> then invoke Sage to verify the answers. In the case of "Question 1"
> above, Sage would compute the derivative of f(x), pass the computed
> answer back to Moodle so that Moodle can grade the test.
>
> These are some of my first thoughts on a crude Sage/Moodle
> integration. I've used Moodle in the past, but not as a course admin,
> so my knowledge of Moodle internals is next to nothing. However, I see
> this Sage/Moodle integration as a challenge I really want to tackle
> because other course management systems I've used in the past, either
> as an end user or as a course admin, have failed in some cases
> miserably for me. To be honest, I've very little idea on how this can
> be implemented so suggestions are always welcome. But in the end, I
> want to get across something that demonstrates that Sage and Moodle
> can talk with each other.
>
> --
> Regards
> Minh Van Nguyen
>
> >
>

[Gustav Delius]

This is indeed a very interesting idea. Luckily something like this
already exists, except that it is not using the whole of Sage but only
Maxima. Take a look at stack.bham.ac.uk.

Gustav
------------------------------------
Dr Gustav W Delius, Department of Mathematics
University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
Tel.: +44 (1904) 433 077, Fax.: +44 (1904) 433 071, office: G/110
------------------------------------





2009/3/27 Minh Nguyen <nguye...@gmail.com>:

>
> Hi folks,
>
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Marshall Hampton <hamp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>

>> I am interested in this too, although the way my university sets up
>> its moodle server I can't really hack it at all. I would be interested
>> on working on a concrete project - what is a simple goal to get
>> started?
>

[Rob Beezer]

Hi Minh,

> I'll be working on a proof-of-concept integration with Moodle. For
> this, what I have in mind is that, say, one is managing a maths course
> and wants to create a set of self-tests for students to take as the
> course progresses.

I stumbled across this page last night for unrelated reasons. Check-
out the discussion and links in about the middle of the page under the
heading "Undergrad Computer Aided Assessment". it all feels familiar,
lots of talk about open-source, located in Oz, but no mention of
Sage. :-(

http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~keady/

Rob

[Gustav Delius]

Hi Minh,

there are two things in this thread that should not be confused with
each other: 1) Sage/Moodle integration and 2) computer-aided
assessment of mathematics. Sage is for doing Maths. STACK
(stack.bham.ac.uk) is for assessing maths and giving feedback. The two
ideally would be used together. It would be good to be able to use
STACK questions inside SAGE notebooks. I posted about that on the
STACK forums at http://stack.bham.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=144.

Gustav

On Mar 28, 3:13 am, Minh Nguyen <nguyenmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Gustav,

>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Gustav Delius <gustav.del...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is indeed a very interesting idea. Luckily something like this
> > already exists, except that it is not using the whole of Sage but only
> > Maxima. Take a look at stack.bham.ac.uk.
>

> I remember reading about STACK in 2008, but probably that was
> something else. Thank you for refreshing my memory, and pointing out
> the URL.
>
> I think I haven't clearly explained my application area. With regards
> to symbolic maths, Maxima is very matured as far as I know. However,
> when I tried to study undergraduate cryptography using Maxima, there
> lies a problem. It was very difficult as a beginner to both learn the
> crypto theory and experiment with it using Maxima. At least in
> cryptography, I think Sage just makes me happy. And for that, I thank
> Martin Albrecht, David Kohel, among other contributors to the crypto
> module of Sage.
>
> The other things I find interesting are elliptic curves and number
> theoretic cryptosystems. In the context of an undergraduate crypto lab
> session, one can use Maple to study the RSA cryptosystem and design
> exercises to get students to factorize "large" integers in breaking
> variants of RSA, e.g. Koblitz's kid crypto. But using Maple for
> factorization in such a lab session doesn't fully convey to students
> the necessity of time and speed in modern number theoretic
> cryptosystems. Pari/GP is very good at this sort of thing and some
> maths educators have used it to teach crypto within number theory
> courses. For example, William Stein during his time at Harvard
> University, and I think John Grove at The University of Melbourne.
>
> Having said that, I know that at least someone has used both Axiom and
> Maxima in teaching undergraduate crypto:
>
> @inproceedings{McAndrew_2008,
>  author = {Alasdair McAndrew},
>  title = {Teaching cryptography with open-source software},
>  booktitle = {SIGCSE},
>  year = {2008},
>  pages = {325-329},
>  crossref  = {DBLP:conf/sigcse/2008},}
>
> @proceedings{DBLP:conf/sigcse/2008,
>  editor = {J. D. Dougherty and Susan H. Rodger and Sue Fitzgerald and
> Mark Guzdial},
>  title = {Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on
> Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2008, Portland, OR, USA, March
> 12--15, 2008},
>  booktitle = {SIGCSE},
>  publisher = {ACM},
>  year = {2008},

[David Joyner]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 6:20 AM, pang <pablo....@uam.es> wrote:
>
> Hello:
> I'm now learning moodle as admin, and I would like to use another
> kind of moodle integration, just to control access to the sage server
> and to organize the notebooks. I have the following reasons:
>
> 1) Security: I've been told sage servers can be taken down if
> universal access is allowed. If I want a secure enough sage server
> without constant monitoring and my limited admin experience then I'd
> have to create one accounts for each student myself and mail them the
> passwords or what?. Moodle has many ways to deal with this problem,
> like the password for enrollment, so that students can create their
> own accounts.

Others can comment much more expertly than I. However, I can tell
you that several people have posted security suggestions to the ssage wiki.
You might want to check there.


>
> 2) Organization and sharing: sage notebooks aren't organized in
> folders and they aren't attached to a calendar. They all appear in a
> single long list. If I want to place a notebook at a particular moment
> of a course, I can think of two approaches:
> * Using the sharing capabilities of sage: I would publish a notebook
> in sage, then students would edit a copy or create other notebooks,
> and share them with me. Occasionally, I would publish some of the
> students' notebooks. This all happens outside moodle, though I could

I think if you publish a notebook session then it is "owned" by your
account. The student would have to create a new worksheet to share it
with you. When I give an assignment, I just tell the students to share it
with me or download their sws file and email it to me.


> post links to the notebooks in the moodle pages. E.g., a student could
> write a post in a forum with a link to the notebook she's just
> published.
> * Upload the sws files into moodle. Then if students want to show me
> their notebooks, they can either send their sws files as assignments,
> or place their files in the public forums if they want to share their
> work with the other students. They'd have to keep two separate tabs,
> one for moodle and the other for sage, each with a different login.
>
> This is all possible, but some integration would make it simpler, and
> reduce dramatically the number of clicks. Something like this: a
> student logs into moodle, goes to the course page, sees the new
> activity "linear algebra with sage" for this week, clicks on it to go
> directly to the sage notebook and saves it when she's done. I could
> see the list of notebooks of any one student, and edit them to add
> comments. When a student sees the list of her notebooks, she knows
> which ones I have modified. Just this would make a difference for me.


I don't know if this is possible or not but I think it woul dbe great if you
could post any experience you have on sage-edu.


>
> I'll be teaching with sage next year for the first time, so please
> tell me if this makes sense to you.
>
> Regards,
> Pablo Angulo
>
> PS: google doesn't allow me to send emails normally for some obscure
> reason. I have to login and post from the web browser: does any of you
> have this problem?


No I have not heard of that problem before. However, it appears that you
replied to a sage-edu post on sage-devel. (My emailed grouped this
message in the same thread as the others anyway.) I wonder if that
is the problem somehow?


>
> >
>

[pang]

> I think if you publish a notebook session then it is "owned" by your
> account. The student would have to create a new worksheet to share it
> with you. When I give an assignment, I just tell the students to share it
> with me or download their sws file and email it to me.

We'll stick to that for now. We'll probably install one copy of sage
in
each computer, anyway.

But I'm thinking of cutting and pasting the code in a wiki more often
than publishing a sws. I want the code visible at plain sight, and I
want students to cooperate.

I'll give a though to the following idea: I could write a moodle
"filter" that reads sage code, evaluate it and posts the result, just
like the tex filter does with tex. This would fit nicely with the
version control of wikis. Otherwise, I can search for a simple way to
cut and paste both the input and the output, including figures.

I'll tell you if I get anywhere, I've just started learning moodle. By
the way, let me say I'm quite impressed.

Regards