eBooks

Introduction to Programming with MathPiper - The first part of this book contains the installation instructions for MathPiperIDE and an introduction to how to use MathPiperIDE.  The rest of the book is devoted to teaching beginners how to program using the MathPiper programming language.

Exploring STEM with MathPiper - This book shows how to use the programming skills that were learned in Introduction to Programming with MathPiper to explore various parts of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines.  The book also contains an introduction to the GeoGebra dynamic mathematics environment (which is included in MathPiperIDE as a plugin) and it discusses how to use MathPiper and GeoGebra together to explore mathematics and physics concepts.

Presentations

MathPiper STEM and Patterns presentation - I started working on MathPiper and showing it to people in 2008, but I soon discovered that trying to explain why computer algebra systems like MathPiper were important was challenging.  The original presentation I developed was too complex for people to easily understand and none of the adjustments I made to it seemed to help.  I finally decided to experiment with a radically different approach than what I had been using and this patterns-based presentation is the result.

At the university where I teach, we offer a beginning programming course (which is based on the above two books) as a post-secondary option to local high schools.  We use this presentation to explain to administrators and teachers why mathematics-oriented computer programming is superior to graphing calculators in the real world and why having their students learn a mathematics-oriented programming language like MathPiper would be beneficial.

So far almost every administrator and teacher this presentation has been shown to seems to just get it.  Then, instead of arguing about whether or not a mathematics-oriented programming class should be taught at the school, the focus of the discussion becomes working through the logistics of offering the class as an experiment.

My thought is that this presentation, or a presentation which is derived from it, may also be helpful for 1) explaining why your school should think about offering a MathPiper-based class and 2) recruiting students into the class. Ted.

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The eBooks and presentations in this section are all in OpenOffice.org format and they are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. The OpenOffice files for these books can be downloaded from the project website here.