[TOS] Introduction

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Jason,

On Wednesday 01 December 2010 05:35:08 me wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I've just joined the list and I'm writing to introduce myself.  I'm a
> mathematician at the University of Missouri
> in Columbia, Missouri.  I'm closely involved with the WeBWorK project
> (webwork.maa.org).  

FYI, My mailer did not hyperlink this address - next time include fully 
qualified URLs and separate them with whitespace:

http://webwork.maa.org/

> WeBWorK is an
> open-source perl-based online homework system for math courses.  It's
> widely used:
> 
> http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/WeBWorK_Sites
> 
> Compared to publisher based systems, WeBWorK is far more sophisticated
> in terms of the mathematics it can handle.
> But, the publisher systems tend to be shinier. :)
> 

Nice. But why the erratic capital letters in the middle and end of the name? 

> WeBWorK began development iin 1995 by Profs. Arnold Pizer and Michael
> Gage at the University of Rochester
> Department of Mathematics. It is now supported by a team of developers
> from several institutions and is used for a
> variety of subjects.  Also, the Mathematical Association of America,
> one of the two main professional societies for mathematicians,
> has recently 'adopted' webwork.  They host courses for math courses
> around the country and provide us with server space for our
> svn repositories, forums, wiki, and mailing lists.  WeBWorK is also
> supported by the NSF.
> 

Sounds good.

> We're very much trying to 'do' open-source right; we have a great
> community of math faculty from around the US and abroad who
> use webwork at their institutions, write documentation, contribute on
> the fourms, author webwork problems, and contribute to
> webwork development.  But, we're pretty much all mathematicians by
> training (rather than developers, technical writers, community
> managers, etc.), and in spite of the longevity and success of WeBWorK
> so far, we could learn a lot from people involved with
> other open-source projects.  So, I was very excited to come across the
> teachingopensource.org site, and I'm looking forward to learning
> from you all and  contributing where I can.
> 

I see WeBWorK has a Freshmeat.net page:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/openwebwork

However, I don't see any releases there. You should also put it on 
http://www.ohloh.net/ and http://openhatch.org/ in case it's not there 
already.

> If you're interested to know what kind of development is going on, the
> following page on our wiki lists some ideas we put up for a Google SOC
> application for last summer (sadly, not funded).
> 
> http://webwork.maa.org/wiki/Google_summer_of_code_projects
> 
> And, I invite you to take a look at webwork and let us know if you are
> interested in contributing.  For development, knowledge of perl,
> javascript or html5/css3 would help, but like any other open-source
> project, there are a lot of ways to get involved.

Is there any online demo for it?

> 
> Also, to that end, we would be very  much like to explore the
> possibility of participating in the POSSE program.  We've communicated
> some with Mel about
> this, with the idea of perhaps running a POSSE program either
> alongside or in support of a workshop that we already have in the
> works.
> This past summer, a colleague and I submitted  a proposal this summer
> to the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), to run a so-called
> PREP (Professional Enhancement Programs) workshop at the end of June
> 2011 intended to bring together professors from around the country
> interested in contributing to WeBWorK. Happily, that has been funded,
> and perhaps there is an opportunity for collaboration here.
> 
> But, either way, I'm excited to be a part of this community, and,
> well, that's my introduction!
> 

Good luck with WeBWorK and future endeavours.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
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