Jim Charter wrote:

>But I admit I don't have any specific ideas about how to 
> incorporate POV with teaching.  

So far, most of what I've done has been along the lines of using POV to 
create visual aids.


>Any attempts I have made to interest 
> highschool math teachers I know have not lead to much interest.  

This spring, when I have more time, I plan to go around to the area 
highschools and talk to the math and especially computer teachers to see 
if I can generate some interest among them and the students.  I'd like 
to try to organize a student POVRay contest for the 2004 - 05 school 
year (we'll see about that. . . .)
>I would 
> be interested to know what you are doing.

At my previous school, on the Navajo reservation, I got a couple of 
students interested in POVRay -- I'm not sure if they're still doing 
anything.  There could be great potential there (I'm probably going to 
move back; I miss it) since there's a high emphasis on the visual arts 
throughout the college (students are required to take courses in 
traditional Navajo arts, such as silversmithing, basketweaving and 
blanket weaving.)

Here, so far, I've just been using POV for demonstrations.  I'll post up 
a still from one of my animations (I make QuickTime animations, and 
QuickTime doesn't export to MPEG1 -- I know, there's Movie2MPEG, and I 
converted a movie at home, and forgot to bring it along to the office -- 
anyway. . . .)

It's easy to demonstrate cross-products, vector fields, directional 
derivatives, etc., although I keep forgetting that many of the needed 
functions can be found ready-made in POVRay or math.inc, and I tend to 
re-invent my own.  I also make heavy use of Ingo's param.inc for 
creating lots and lots of classic and new parametric surfaces.


Dave Matthews

Post a reply to this message