MAA panel session on "Free and low-cost software and textbooks for the classroom"

[David Joyner]

Hello sage-edu-ers:

Jason Martin http://www.math.jmu.edu/~martin/, Lon Mitchell
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~lmitchell2/,
and I sat in on a panel session on the above topic yesterday morning.
It was part of the
Section NExT Session held in the Fall 2009 MAA sectional meeting at
Goucher College
http://facultyfp.salisbury.edu/despickler/mddcvamaa/Fall2009Meeting.asp
http://facultyfp.salisbury.edu/despickler/mddcvamaa/MeetingFiles/Fall2009Meeting/Fall09_Section_NExT.pdf
It was organized by Brian Lins
http://people.hsc.edu/faculty-staff/blins/ and Craig Larson
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~clarson/. There were about 20 teachers from
schools in MD, DC,
and VA attending.

I talked about Sage and teaching differential equations. I bought the
Sage tutorial,
the book Differential Calculus and Sage, and Rob Beezer's book to show everyone
examples of free books you can use supporting Sage. Jason and I tried
to explain the mechanics
of setting up a Sage server, and Jason shared his own teaching
experiences. Lon had not used
Sage but talked about his experiences using open source materials in
the classroom.
Craig Larson, how is a colleague of Lon at VCU, and some others
present (whose names
I've forgotten) mentioned similar experiences.

All in all, a positive day for Sage in education I think!

- David

[Rob Beezer]

Hi David,

Thanks for the report. Lon Mitchell and Craig Larson have gathered up
several good open-source textbooks and made hardback copies available
on Amazon.com as part of the "Virginia Commonwealth Mathematics"
series. But I haven't ever been able to find a good online listing of
just which books they've made available.

Rob

[David Joyner]

I was told that there is the Judson book on abstract algebra
http://abstract.ups.edu/sage-aata.html,
the Hefferon book on linear algebrahttp://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/,
and a book that a colleague is still working on that he did not give
details on (though he did
say it was not in print yet). If you know of others, please let me know.

[Rob Beezer]

Found out today those are the only two books in print right now, and
the third will be an "intro to proofs" book.

Sounds like they may be printing the books through Lightning Source,
which I think then handles distribution through Amazon.com.
http://www.lightningsource.com/

Rob

On Nov 16, 5:14 pm, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was told that there is the Judson book on abstract algebrahttp://abstract.ups.edu/sage-aata.html,