{"id":12510,"date":"2021-05-20T09:05:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T13:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/laboratoire\/subject-specific-vte-labs-innovative-practices-in-mathematics\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T10:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T14:54:10","slug":"subject-specific-vte-labs-innovative-practices-in-mathematics","status":"publish","type":"laboratories","link":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/labs\/subject-specific-vte-labs-innovative-practices-in-mathematics-january-15-2020-at-100-pm\/subject-specific-vte-labs-innovative-practices-in-mathematics\/","title":{"rendered":"Subject-Specific Vt\u00e9 Labs: Innovative Practices in Mathematics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">On January 20, 2021, the Vt\u00e9 presented a webinar aimed at mathematics teachers. The 1-hour presentation showcased the project of Jean-S\u00e9bastien Turcotte and Phil\u00e9mon Turcotte, 2 mathematics teachers at C\u00e9gep G\u00e9rald-Godin, who created an online, open mathematics textbook in French. Their textbook, ALIR\u00a0(Alg\u00e8bre Lin\u00e9aire: Intuition et Rigueur) was written entirely in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pretextbook.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PreTeXt<\/a>, \u201cAn uncomplicated XML vocabulary for authors of research articles, textbooks, and monographs\u201d.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">During the lab, the pair presented an overview of the textbook, demonstrated PreTeXt\u2019s potential for teachers of all disciplines, and gave some helpful tips on how to get started creating your own online textbook.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Missed it? Watch the lab below or read my report to learn more about this innovative project and the amazing pedagogical potential of PreTeXt.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding: 53.59% 0 0 0; position: relative;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" title=\"Subject-Specific Vt\u00e9 Labs_ Innovative Practices in Mathematics\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1069979736?title=0&amp;amp;byline=0\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\">Move over, paper<\/h2>\n<p>Jean-S\u00e9bastien and Philemon have used ALIR to teach matrix algebra and vector geometry since the Fall 2020 semester. As their students were already going to use their computers for complex calculations, they sought to build a one-stop-shop that would include theory, exercises, games, and labs.<\/p>\n<p>ALIR\u2019s advantages over traditional paper textbook are obvious:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Open and free<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Accessible anywhere from any electronic device<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Interactive exercises that include hints, solutions, and full justifications<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Easy navigation and cross-referencing with hyperlinks and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/aimath.org\/knowls-browsing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">knowls<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">ALIR makes use of PreTeXt\u2019s support of a variety of math-specific open software to present a professional-looking, comprehensive, and interactive textbook:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.geogebra.org\/?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GeoGebra<\/a>\u00a0(interactive figures),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sagemath.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SageMath<\/a>\u00a0(complex matrices),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mathjax.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MathJax<\/a>\u00a0(beautiful-looking equations),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\"><a href=\"https:\/\/webwork.maa.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WeBWorK<\/a>\u00a0(randomly-generated self-correcting exercises),<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\" aria-level=\"1\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\"><a href=\"https:\/\/runestone.academy\/runestone\/default\/user\/login?_next=\/runestone\/default\/index\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Runestone<\/a>\u00a0(allow students to submit their notes and assignments).<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\">An accessible language<\/h2>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">As far as languages go, PreTeXt is about as simple as it gets.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/utmost.aimath.org\/pretext\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UTMOST<\/a>, the organization behind PreTeXt, explains that they wanted it to be \u201chuman-readable and human-writeable\u201d; all the tags are simple and straightforward, with no confusing contractions or acronyms.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Before they began working on ALIR, the two teachers had very limited coding experience. The wealth of information available on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pretextbook.org\/doc\/guide\/html\/guide-toc.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PreTeXt\u2019s official website<\/a>\u00a0as well as on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GitHub<\/a>\u00a0made the realization of the project relatively painless.<\/p>\n<p>According to the pair, the time investment is well worth it. PreTeXt\u2019s focus on accessibility guarantees that no student is left behind, whether they be colourblind or visually-impaired; it does not use colour for emphasis and allows for easy zooming. Moreover, anything you create can easily be exported into almost any format: raw text, PDF, ePub, or even\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/aimath.org\/aimnews\/braille_full\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">braille<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;\">Author: <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;\">Simon C\u00f4t\u00e9-Massicotte<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On January 20, 2021, the Vt\u00e9 presented a webinar aimed at mathematics teachers. The 1-hour presentation showcased the project of Jean-S\u00e9bastien Turcotte and Phil\u00e9mon Turcotte, 2 mathematics teachers at C\u00e9gep [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":356,"featured_media":0,"parent":11251,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","tags":[],"discipline":[],"approach":[],"class_list":["post-12510","laboratories","type-laboratories","status-publish","hentry","cf"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/laboratories\/12510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/laboratories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/laboratories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/356"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12510"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/laboratories\/11251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12510"},{"taxonomy":"discipline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline?post=12510"},{"taxonomy":"approach","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eductive.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/approach?post=12510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}