Teaching course with Context Free

In case anyone is interested in checking it out, I am teaching an interdisciplinary course in math, programming, and art at my college, and I've decided to use Context Free for the first part of the course. We've been going for a week or so now, and things seem to be o.k. Here is the website for the course: http://math.mercyhurst.edu/~credmond/computer_art/

Every freshman at our school has to take an interdisciplinary course that involves three different subjects. My course is the only one that includes any mathematics or programming. I have 30 students, and almost none of them, really, have any programming experience. There are just a handful with some experience in art. My hope is that perhaps a few of them might consider going on a bit in programming and/or art after having the course.

I made sure to encourage them to wait until the course is over before joining the community here, if they are interested in doing so, and then to be selective and upload their best work. I wanted to protect the gallery from a flood of basic designs. I think only a few, if any, might join at the conclusion of the course.

You might want to let your students know that there is a newly formed IRC channel for Context Free: #ContextFree on irc.freenode.net. John and I are on in the evenings (Pacific time). We are happy to answer questions and help.

- Mark

Ok! Thank you, Mark. I've never been on an IRC, though. I guess they're easy enough to use?

The course has gone pretty well so far. We're finished with Context Free now, and I think the students' designs have been pretty good. None of them have joined the community here, so the best place to see their designs is this link

http://math.mercyhurst.edu/~credmond/co ... t/top.html

which displays what I think have been the best designs so far. There are links throughout this page to all of the students' work. Here is a link to a clip of me talking about the course:

http://blog.hurstalumni.org/2010/10/mer ... -i-no-vii/

Nice! Marissa Nielsen's "thirteen" was my favorite CFDG image on your "Top designs" page so I was glad you chose that one to highlight in the video.

Your students' designs are all so beautiful! It would be wonderful if they would upload them to the gallery.

Thank you, guys!

In the beginning of the course, I was hesitant to encourage the students to upload their work to the gallery because I didn't want to flood it with designs, especially since there are 30 students and they are doing one or two designs a week.

I think I could do this now, and I will. I'll tell them to submit what they think are their best designs, and if they have a large number of them they would like to upload, I'll suggest maybe staggering their submissions, uploading one or two and then waiting a bit before uploading again. This would allow time for others to see their designs, and they wouldn't be bumping everyone else off the front page in one fell swoop.

At this point, I don't think an avalanche of designs will take place. Only those who have developed a passion for this and/or have done some really nice work will give it a try. I'll talk to them this week about it. (This is our last week.)

Thanks for all that you do and for your interest! It's this community that made a course like this possible, and at least for me, it's been a great experience.