08 July

Documenting this website’s migration

Seng Kwang Tan Blog 0 Comments

After years of hosting my website on a traditional webhosting service that has seen multiple service disruption over the years, I have switched to Amazon Web Services, which is more reliable and scaleable. I want my students to be able to access new features in my website with faster loading speeds. AWS is much harder to set up as there is so much to learn and a lot of SSH commands to key in. The first key decision is to decide whether an EC2 or Lightsail instance is better suited to my needs. In the end, I decided to go with Lightsail as it seemed easier to update the necessary DNS records.

One of the first features I am experimenting with is a Udemy-style LMS plugin that allows me to create lessons and quizzes within a course structure and comes with a mobile-friendly user-interface. I wanted a platform in which my GeoGebra apps, as well as other online resources such as YouTube videos, can be stitched together for students to review or learn new topics at their own pace, as well as for classroom activities.

I initially wanted to use LearnPress, a fuss free and user-friendly plugin for this purpose, and even designed a course within it. However, I soon realise that it does not have a feature for analysis of students’ results. So now I have installed Tutor LMS and will be putting in content soon. Tutor LMS also comes with many more question types including ordering and fill-in-the-blank.

I experimented with Google OAuth in another Lightsail instance and will be implementing it here so my students can log in using their school gmail account.

The next necessary plugin was Mathjax for LaTex input. I needed to make some edits to the lesson sidebar in the Tutor LMS plugin in order to fix a bug that prevents the equations from rendering when navigating using the sidebar.

I have also updated some CSS to customise the Tutor LMS pages to fit the general style of my current website theme.

29 May

Template for self-assessment questions

Seng Kwang Tan GeoGebra 0 Comments

Here is a template that I might use to generate questions for students’ self-assessment in future. Based on a query that one of the participants in a GeoGebra online tutorial asked about generating random questions for simple multiplication for lower primary students.

The online tutorial was conducted by some teachers in the Singapore MOE GeoGebra community to share how GeoGebra could be used to create resources for home-based learning.

27 May

Teaching Python

Seng Kwang Tan Programming, Python, Technology 0 Comments

An ex-colleague from HQ introduced me to Trinket: a useful web-based code editor that allows students to tinker with codes and showcase their work. Here’s an example of a BMI calculator that can be embedded via iframes.

As I am teaching programming to the lower sec IP students this term as part of their Skills and Knowledge curriculum, I was wondering if I should use this to ask my students to submit their work.

24 May

Angular velocity

Seng Kwang Tan 06 Motion in a Circle, GeoGebra 0 Comments

This GeoGebra app shows how angular velocity ω is the rate of change of angular displacement (i.e. $\omega=\dfrac{\theta}{t}$) and is dependent on the speed and radius of the object in circular motion (i.e. $v=r\omega$).

Students can explore the relationships by doing the following:

Keeping r constant and varying ω.

Keeping ω constant and varying r.

Keeping v constant by varying r and ω.

24 May

Angular displacement

Seng Kwang Tan 06 Motion in a Circle, GeoGebra 0 Comments

This GeoGebra app shows the relationship s = rθ.

One activity I get students can do is to look at the value of θ when the arc length s is equal to the radius r. This would give the definition of the radian, which is the angle subtended at the centre of a circle by an arc equal in length to its radius.

Mathematics defines the constant π as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. This can also be shown in the app, although you need to drag the moving point to a point just short of one full revolution.