VMTWiki: 07MeetingFifteen

04/18/2007

Software development status: moving production server to nickel, which is expected to be ready by the next day. Other details see [Monday meeting notes] and email from Gerry to Michael on priorities of ConcertChat development.
When can the environment be ready for schools to try out?
- April 25th (Wednesday) the very earliest.
- If it can't be ready by 27th, the schedule for the spring fest may need to move back.
Spring fest recruitment: over 260 students are signing up among which 2 groups of 50 are high school
Ian updated on what to remove for the existing problems and strategies
- Apply a formula: it is commonly used along with other strategies
- Computer program and use a table or chart could be combined - both can fall in the same purpose of counting cases
- baseball world series: might be too advanced for middle schoolers
- Tree diagram and table or chart can be different ways of enumerating possibilities
Discussion on problems and strategies
- Need to narrow down the number of problems; could keep the number of strategies
- Need to keep some problems that are interesting and challenging. There are participants from probability class and high achievers.
- Geo PoW? this week is a variation of the chord problem. What strategies would naturally math the chord problem? - Organizing the cases, transforming from continuous change to discrete changes
- Pick a problem we are not going to use to illustrate strategies for solving it: we will use baseball world series problem; clean the sock drawer problem
Process of spring fest
- We will try to mix schools or classes to create the opportunity for students to work with others from other places
- Registration page: add school name; set default project
- Make sure the password email contains username as well since we allow multiple users use one email address.
- Check to avoid the password email being sent to spam folder for some mail servers - configure to send from (vmtlink at mathforum was removed due to spam on 10/25/2007)
- Make sure wiki has guides for things we want students to do
- Prepare documents for teachers - give them idea what students will do; feature problem solving is the main theme and keep it simple
- Is the matrix page still open to anyone if under single sign on?
- Need to think about group formation and orientation
- Need to work on script for the process
- Problems will be pre-loaded in the lobby. Rooms will be pre-created. Rooms will be organized problem-oriented. So we need to tell students how to create a new room if they want to discuss a different problem.
- Send teachers the document and encourage them to explore. Schedule certain time that we will be online if they have questions.
- Do we need moderators for the sessions? - Probably not. But need people online during sessions in the lounge. Sending messages can be a secondary option (when no one is around).
- Right now no login has privilege. Shall we create some moderator accounts?
- Feedback for the sessions:
  - We should provide if we can. It will probably be general feedback at end of each session. Could try different things at different points of time.
- Script can set up things for points of time that are not applicable or appropriate for groups at different competence levels. Feedback between sessions can be a good way to guide the group what to do next.
- Help manual is out of date.
Nickel will be released on April 19th.
We will meet next Monday to see how testing worked out and where we are with orientation materials and overview.