I'm Serge Baliff. I am a graduate student in the Math department.
And I'm studying algebra
in particular finite fields and combinatorics.
And I've certainly come to love the subject.
I think everybody quits Math before it gets fun.
They think that calculus is the end and, no no,
that's just the end of the boring stuff.
I can think of some riddles that come to mind.
Suppose you have a swimming pool full of water,
a 5 liter container and an 8 liter container and
no other way to hold or measure water,
how can you come up with exactly 4 liters of water?
And to answer that question, you could use what's called group theory.
I recently received my certificate, and I was very pleased.
I had taught many courses already, and
in teaching those courses, I've used the technology.
I've used it well at some times
and less effectively at other times.
But because I'd already put in a lot of work,
the certificate seemed like something that would be worth following up on.
The benefits definitely include just the ability to
show things in an effective and quick way.
A lot of the time in the classroom, you spend writing out ideas
that can be displayed in much quicker way.
Certainly in math, three-dimensional graphics are beautiful when done on the computer,
but when I get up to the board, they look terrible.
I really have to kind of move my hands and get my students to imagine
and with the technology that problem's alleviated.
Certainly in creating the graphics or the material.
It can be really be time consuming.
That's one big downside.
A lot of the classrooms don't have technology enabled.
So your hands are kind of tied there.
You do have the option of bringing in your own material
and projectors but that's also a lot of work.
It definitely does and I have several templates
created where I can just change a few commands
and get the right graph.
So, even though there is a high initial learning curve, once you do have
that piece of knowledge, you can easily just adapt it.
I have found it to be a worthwhile experience.
I've also wasted plenty of hours chasing down techniques that didn't pan out,
but it's so nice to have them in place.
And then, the next time you teach the course, it's so much easier.
Actually, that wasn't too difficult at all.
She gave me the requirements showed me links and told me what to do
and left me to it for the most part, which was probably the right way to go.
You can't have too much direction on something that's supposed to be
such an individual project
I would definitely recommend it for other students.
Like I said, it was wonderful to sit down and think through what was important
what would help other people, what I should leave out
and what I should change in my own teaching.