Hi Rob, On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Rob Beezer <goo...@beezer.cotse.net> wrote: > > Hi Minh, > >> I'll be working on a proof-of-concept integration with Moodle. For >> this, what I have in mind is that, say, one is managing a maths course >> and wants to create a set of self-tests for students to take as the >> course progresses. > > I stumbled across this page last night for unrelated reasons. Check- > out the discussion and links in about the middle of the page under the > heading "Undergrad Computer Aided Assessment". it all feels familiar, > lots of talk about open-source, located in Oz, but no mention of > Sage. :-(
Unfortunately... I've used MapleTA in the past and I can say from experience that it's a mess to even install. When one talks about Sage being messy because it supports over 70 standard maths packages from numerous upstream projects, a first impression is that Sage would be a mess to install. But what's so difficult about downloading a source distro, un-tar it, and invoke "make"? Yes, this is a rhetorical question :-) In case one's system is some exotic combination of OS and hardware, installing Sage can be a pain unless mabshoff is available at 1800-sage-devel or 1800-sage-support :-) I've worked with MapleTA; installing on a Windows machine was quite painful enough, let alone on a Linux box. Another real pain for me at least was learning another language just to be able to write maths questions. So first I had to learn the Maple language, then another language to write questions that uses the Maple kernel as a symbolic engine. Another frustration is the occasional server crash/unresponsiveness and one then has to go over the joy of installing again. I'm rambling here, I admit. But undergraduate students like myself deserve better, especially for students at small universities with little internal/external fundings for teaching and learning programs. What I'm trying to say is, "A long sigh". -- Regards Minh Van Nguyen --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
