The Roles of Scientific
WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook
as An Instructional Tool in A Mathematics
Curriculum
Jonathan Lewin
Department of Mathematics
Kennesaw State University
lewins@mindspring.com
Abstract
The product Scientific Workplace by
TCI Software Research has been available
for a few years. It provides a logical
design environment for the simple
production of sophisticated scientific
documents and it also provides a simple
and intuitive way of obtaining many
of the features of the computing utilities
Maple and Mathematica. Now a new product,
Scientific Notebook has emerged from
TCI and is nearing the end of its
beta test phase. In some ways, the
two products are very similar but
there are some striking differences.
This paper discusses some of the
similarities and differences between
the two products and describes the
role that Scientific Workplace and
Scientific Notebook have played
in the mathematics curriculum at
Kennesaw State University.
Kennesaw State University has
a campus-wide site license for Scientific
Workplace which is installed in
computer labs to which students
have access and is also installed
on a large number of faculty office
machines. Many instructors use Scientific
Workplace as a computing tool for
many of their classes, making use
of its friendly and natural computing
environment. However, the author
of this paper has also used Scientific
Workplace and Notebook as a communications
tool and this latter role of the
products promises to become very
important to the department in the
next year or two.
The author no longer uses a blackboard.
He carries a laptop computer into
the classroom and hooks it to an
LCD display. The lecture notes that
are developed during each lecture
are added to a Scientific Workplace
document that grows larger as the
term progresses. At the end of each
lecture, the author updates the
lecture note document in the computer
labs and also sends an update of
this document to his FTP site and
his site in the World Wide Web.
All students make use of the computer
labs on campus to access the lecture
notes and other notes, handouts,
assignments and announcements that
are placed there by the author.
A steadily increasing number of
students have their own desktop
computers running Windows 95 and
most of these have downloaded the
beta version of Scientific Notebook
from the World Wide Web. The downloading
is free and they are able to use
Scientific Notebook free for 30
days. At the end of this period
they have to purchase the product
for a mere 60. Students using Scientific
Notebook at home receive all of
the material that is available in
the computer labs by going to the
author's FTP site. Finally, an increasing
number of students are sending homework
and questions to the author in the
form of Scientific Workplace or
Scientific Notebook documents, either
as e-mail enclosures or by uploading
to the author's FTP site.
The thrust of this paper is therefore
that, quite apart from the friendly
computing environment that is provided
by Scientific Workplace and Notebook,
these products also have the potential
to stimulate major pedagogical changes
and reforms in the way in which
material is presented to students.
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