Teaching and doing mathematics remotely
March 16, 2020 — October 28, 2021
On the particular online co-working needs of mathematicians.
1 Background
- Yvonne Lai, Ray Levy, Help! I need to teach my course online and I’ve never done this before.
- Terry Tao’s blog post attracts some interesting commenters making suggestions.
- Doing maths on the internet » Heidelberg Laureate Forums
2 Pedagogic practice
Carpentries have some pragmatic tips for teaching computational tasks online, and a COVID update.
samjshah does a high school mathematics teaching roundup.
3 Technical setup
Which gizmos do I need? Sebastian Rieck describes an omnibus setup that looks low-fuss and reasonably affordable: A Simple and Cheap Recording Setup for Online Lecturing. Includes tips for all the parts, e.g. microphone, video lighting, tripod…
3.1 For bad internet
Richard Wong suggests how to record things for the bandwidthistically challenged, which realistically includes many students and some teachers. Teaching in the Time of Coronavirus, Part I notes the importance of managing this by
- posting your lecture notes online
- making lecture slides (and posting them online)
- recording your lecture.
3.2 Whiteboard
See online whiteboards for various freehand options.
Mathcha - Online Math Editor is a mathematics-augmented virtual whiteboard that imports/exports LaTeX.
3.3 Videoconferencing
There are many generic videoconferencing options. I like Jitsi since the other ones are privacy horrors. Social dynamics of online presentation can be tricky.
4 Webcams
See webcams
5 Screencasting
6 Drawing input devices
See stylus input.
7 Math-friendly messaging apps
Not all the chat software supports mathematics.
- Zulip supports mathematics
- Overleaf also has an integrated mathematical chat.
- Gitter has mathematical support
- Stackoverflow teams support mathematical markup
8 Running a conference
idk. But maybe MiniConf 2020 or similar software is a start. Also, this is a community workbook theme: How To Run A Free Online Academic Conference.