Rocket Science

Here’s an update to my previous two posts about The Technical Details and Blog Updates.

• WordPress 2.8.5 (blog software)

New plugins (or ones I forgot to list before):

• Dublin Core for Wordpress (embeds Dublin Core metadata in header)
• Enhanced Recent Posts (allows more control over Recent Posts widget)
• Exclude Pages from Navigation (lets me choose which pages to show/not show in the navigation)
• NextGEN Gallery (the defacto standard for Image Galleries for WordPress)
• Sociable (adds social media tools to each post such as Facebook and de.licio.us)
• Template Override (sneaky little plugin that lets me override the CSS of any of the other plugins, in other words this CSS loads last)
• WordPress Admin Bar (adds a top navigation bar to the admin areas of the blog to allow for actions like on WordPress.com hosted blogs)
• WPTuner (lets me see the performance of the blog for tuning purposes)

(Read more about the disabled and deleted plugins) Read more…

I ran into Philip Schatz at OpenEd 2009 in Vancouver. (I met Phil when he came out for the OER Interoperability Sprint we hosted at COSL.)

Phil’s doing a NSF fellowship with Connexions at Rice University. Recently, he helped release a really cool feature for Connexions: MathML editing.

From Connexions’ Blog,

Now you can generate semantically-correct Content MathML on-the-fly and paste it into your Connexions module.

Kyle. (2009). Good as MEW: Redesigned authoring area, MathML Editor, and more! Retrieve on August 17, 2009 from the connexions blog Web site: http://blog.cnx.org/2009/07/good-as-mew-redesigned-authoring-area.html

But wait, it gets better. When talking with Phil, he says the feature works as a plugin for the Kupu editor. And, he thinks that he can get it working within Wordpress!

Woohoo. Semantically marked-up Math for Wordpress. (Aside, my previous posts discussed LaTeX display in Wordpress.)

(Phil is on a short holiday, but promised me he’d let me know when he had it working!)

Hi all, I just updated the underlying blog infrastructure. So here’s an update to my original post about The Technical Details.

• WordPress 2.8.2 (blog software)
• iNove theme (currently on version 1.4.5)
• Akismet and ReCaptcha (reduces comment spam)
• WordPress Stats (links into WordPress.com stat system)
• Google Analytics (enables Google Analytics sitewide)
• WordPress Vitals (shows the cute guy in the right hand navigation with the details on posts, comments and trackbacks)

Read more…

A little over a week ago, I was thinking about what might we do to improve the functionality of OpenCourseWare sites (more on this later). One idea I hit on, was a notion of “live math” where the equations would be presented in web pages, etc. and rendered as equations while at the same time being both editable/changeable and usable in computer algebra systems (e.g., Mathematica, MathCad, etc.). More recently, OEIT started talking with Math faculty about embedding equations within a system to facilitate discussion about pedagogy.

Here’s some research I did on including equations in web pages/site that might have a social networking component (e.g., discussion of the page). I found a couple general discussions. Also, it appears, for the most part that equations get rendered as images. Some use their own syntax, some use LaTeX, some are WYSIWYG editors more approachable by non-mathematicians.

• LaTex Plugin for Confluence (enterprise wiki, a version of which is run at MIT)
• wpmathpub and WP LaTeX plugins for WordPress (blog software)
• Sitmo Equation Editor (WYSIWYG editor that creates a linkable/downloadable PNG image using a LaTeX parser)
• Live Math software (computer algebra system and equation editing functions, including web viewer/plugins for web browsers)
• DruTeX 5.x-1.3: This Drupal module can be used to display mathematics written in LaTeX.
• Mathematics Filter: This Drupal module allows for addition of mathematics filter to regular input filters.

When looking specifically for Ning-based solutions (software to create your own social network), I ran across this post:

I have realised that the ning site might need an equation editor so off i go at 1:42, after some serious searching no real solution, but found http://www.sitmo.com/latex generates latex images on the fly, however you have to download the image then upload it to the forum, wich is too much of a process i believe.

Source: futurecollege.org. (2008, August 20). experiment in adding unlike fractions, constructionism vs instructivism. Retrieved June 1, 2009 from futurecollege.org Web site: http://futurecollege.org/elearning/?p=40

So at first glance there doesn’t seem to be a really good Ning solution, but I did find a couple Ning-based math communities.

Aside: The idea of rendering math and having it be usable by computer algebra systems is not a new idea, it’s sorta been one of the holy grails of the math education community, since the late 1990s (well, that’s when I got involved with them).

Regarding OpenCourseWare: I wonder how/well CNXML and MathML from Connexions might work. Update: That might be the way to go. I also seem to recall a demo where one could cut and paste MathML from a web page into a computer algebra system.

Update: What about transforming LaTeX to MathML? Here’s one tool, MathToWeb that I found.

So…I chose to continue to host my own website for a few reasons, I can: control the site, customize both the front and back end, and more importantly, gain experience with the tools.

Since I know quite a few techies, I thought it might be interesting to detail some of the initial technical details of the new website.

• WordPress 2.7 (blog software)
• Akismet and ReCaptcha (reduces comment spam)
• WordPress Stats (links into WordPress.com stat system)
• Google Analytics (enables Google Analytics sitewide)
• CiteThis (creates a citation for each page, to meet the attribution requirements of my terms of use) <currently disabled>
• Random Image (puts a random image in the sidebar)
• Yoast Breadcrumbs (puts breadcrumbs on each page and post, though I suppose I could have coded this by hand) <not needed in the iNove theme>

I also did a number of minor tweaks to the template to change the display of individual items. (I’m sure I’ll have fun redoing those tweaks when I upgrade or change the template.)

All in all, nothing too major, but stuff that I couldn’t do on the WordPress.com free account. Over time, I do hope to add in plugins to continue to extend the features of the site.