Busy, busy...

Another busy week down, and another busy week ahead!  I received word that one of my High School Mentors passed away Wednesday evening and that threw me for a loop.  The funeral's tomorrow, and I hope that will help bring some closure for me.  In other news, I gave the last of my STEM workshops for High School students this past weekend at Lakeland.  The feedback from the students and their chaperones was very good, but I am glad it is done.  I struggled with the book this past week.  The polynomial theory stuff is pretty heavy, so the writing didn't come as easy as it did with other topics.  Apart from an anachronous example in section 3.1, however, Jeff and I are pretty pleased with it.  You can access the latest version of the book here.   Thanks for comments on the last post concerning MathCasts.  Here you'll find a screencast of my screencasting demo for Fall 2008 - the powerpoint demo is downloadable and contains hyperlinks to all the goodies I mention therein.  Remember that Topology Conference I was invited to speak at?  The one at the end of April?  Well, surprise - it's THIS coming weekend.  At least the organizer of the conference liked the idea of me giving an INTRO talk to STUDENTS instead of a research talk.  That doesn't mean I'll be any less stressed out, however :-)

SPRING BREAK!

Yes, Lakeland is currently enjoy its Spring Break.  For me, however, the work continues!  The most recent version of the book is found here.  It contains my drafts of the end of Chapter 2 and the first two sections in Chapter 3.  Since Jeff and I are heading to Columbus on Friday for an OBR meeting, I decided to hold off our meeting this week until then.  As a result, I don't have the exercise and edit update Jeffery finished last week, so look for a new update this weekend when I get all the files.  In addition to the road trip Friday, I'm giving a talk at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania on Wednesday about making MathCasts.   I'm looking forward to it primarily because I get a free meal with my dear friend from graduate school, Emily.  Speaking of Emily, she's the one who snapped the picture above of me and three of my students who attended this year's YSU PME Conference a few weeks back. I am flanked by two Math Majors, each of whom gave a wonderful talk at the conference, along with a budding Chemist (who really could be a Math Major, if he wanted.)  Speaking of Youngstown, I will be returning to YSU at the end of April to present something Topology-related.  I was invited to participate in a Symposium the weekend of 4/24 and this afternoon I unearthed my dissertation and am now faced with the task of re-learning the math I created 9 years ago...  I think I was much smarter then.  There is a student session on 4/25, so I am considering putting together a student-friendly survey of Knot Theory geared towards the students instead of a research-heavy presentation.  In other news, despite a year or so of neglect, my dentist gave me a very good bill of dental health today.  I always knew flossing was overrated...  

Moving on over...

Hi, folks!  Since my MobileMe Mac account is about to expire, and I'm too cheap to shell out $100 for a renewal, I am moving my Blog to Blogger.  I found a nice website to post the Book, Scribd, and you can enjoy the most recent incarnation of the book here.  As you can see, the narratives for three chapters are now finished (Chapters 1, 2, and 7), and Jeff's putting the finishing touches on the formatting and exercises in Chapter 1.  We have invested quite a bit of time on the more technical - publishing - end of the book, but it pays.  The more we know, the faster it goes...