Open Source Software Review - Maxima

Open source software has been introduced to the class in a variety of different ways. I remember overhearing the word Audacity come up a few times as being software available for download that allows you to do sound editing, recording and much more. Although this was something that was useful in classroom applications, I felt that I should find something more appropriate for what I want to teach (math, science, physics area). The Virtual Terrain Project caught my eye. This software allows a person to render terrain in 3D. The website offers real terrains of cities like New York and parts of Hawaii. I think it would be interesting to incorporate this into a project where the students are designing their own cities and required to include all of the necessities like schools, police and fire stations while considering the physical layout needed. Additional Open source software that I thought was really interesting was Maxima, a computer algebra system. I remember learning calculus and the pictures in the book were sometimes very vague and hard to determine what you were looking at. Maxima allows for the plotting of very higher end equations and expressions. The extent of this software encompasses simple plotting to very complex items which I know were covered in my years at college including vectors, Laplace transforms and 3D plots. This can be used in lesson plans frequently. Because it’s competition is Maple, which I’ve used and is difficult to come across because it is expensive, isn’t readily available for simple calculations like integrating and differentiation, Maxima is convenient for high school calculus applications where students might not have access to higher end calculators that do the calculations and graphing for them. This can be used in a lesson plan for students to check themselves in answers, get significantly accurate graphs and plots as well as many other uses. Maple used to be available to all Drexel students with the newest version, but this is only good for so long and I myself have had significant issues with the software. I am very tempted to download Maxima and try it out.