MathDL Flash Forum

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

Clicking on a link or a thumbnail in the gallery below will either open a new window for you to try out the corresponding applet or take you directly to the full posting within the Flash Forum. Click here to go to the Flash Forum archive to find previous postings.

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The Flash Forum article The Beauty of Parametric Curves offers two applets. The one for designers encourages experimentation with patterns, and the one for mathematicians allows a user to enter any definition of a parametric curve with parameters corresponding to sliders values.  Commented source code and required custom classes are included in the downloadable zip file.

Click the picture on the left to go to the to this Flash Forum article.

The NSF-funded project that funded the development of much of the material on the MathDL Flash Forum website uses the website www.flashandmath.com for ongoing dissemination.

Click the picture on the right to go to the flashandmath.com website

Link to flashandmath.com

Link to http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/3/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=1805

This video tutorial with supporting files highlights the exciting capabilities of the open source project PaperVision3D. The particular example uses Adobe Flex 3, but since the underlying programming language is ActionScript 3, the broad idea is applicable to Flash as well.

Click the picture on the left to go to this archived Flash Forum tutorial.

This article Motion in 3D provides examples and Flash CS3 source code for plotting a parametrically defined curve in space and tracing velocity and acceleration components as arrows on the graph. Any functions can be entered by the user and the applet also contains a series of interesting examples for teaching.

Click the picture on the right to go to this archived Development article.

MathDL Flash Forum - What's New?

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

Clicking on a link or a thumbnail in the gallery below will either open a new window for you to try out the corresponding applet or take you directly to the full posting within the Flash Forum. Click here to go to the Flash Forum archive to find previous postings.

/images/cms_upload/gallery28213.jpg

The Flash Forum article The Beauty of Parametric Curves offers two applets. The one for designers encourages experimentation with patterns, and the one for mathematicians allows a user to enter any definition of a parametric curve with parameters corresponding to sliders values.  Commented source code and required custom classes are included in the downloadable zip file.

Click the picture on the left to go to the to this Flash Forum article.

The NSF-funded project that funded the development of much of the material on the MathDL Flash Forum website uses the website www.flashandmath.com for ongoing dissemination.

Click the picture on the right to go to the flashandmath.com website

Link to flashandmath.com

Link to http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/3/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=1805

This video tutorial with supporting files highlights the exciting capabilities of the open source project PaperVision3D. The particular example uses Adobe Flex 3, but since the underlying programming language is ActionScript 3, the broad idea is applicable to Flash as well.

Click the picture on the left to go to this archived Flash Forum tutorial.

This article Motion in 3D provides examples and Flash CS3 source code for plotting a parametrically defined curve in space and tracing velocity and acceleration components as arrows on the graph. Any functions can be entered by the user and the applet also contains a series of interesting examples for teaching.

Click the picture on the right to go to this archived Development article.

MathDL Flash Forum - Purpose of the Flash Forum

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

Educators interested in developing interactive, web-based learning materials have an exciting, powerful tool in Adobe Flash. Flash comes with the full-fledged, object-oriented programming language ActionScript, which makes it possible to create sophisticated applets – self-contained units running within the user's browser – as well as programs that communicate with and use applications on a server.  Such applets and applications are delivered to the audience through the ubiquitous, light-weight, and reliable Flash Player which runs Flash files in any browser and on any platform. The ubiquity and the consistent performance of the Flash Player as well as other features make Flash an attractive solution to needs for online delivery of interactive material.  

The MathDL Flash Forum will provide sample material, source code, and instructions for customizing Flash-based mathematics teaching material. The goal of the FlashForum is to use this shared material along with related discussion threads to build a community of developers and users of Flash.

This project is supported by NSF DUE-0535327 and the Mathematical Sciences Digital Library, a project of the Mathematical Association of America.

 

MathDL Flash Forum - Development Articles

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

Development articles are solicited on the use of Flash technology for any topic related to mathematics teaching and learning. See the page on "Contributing to the MathDL Flash Forum" for more information on how to get involved. Note that there is an abundance of information online for general help with Macromedia Flash.  We particularly recommend Macromedia's  Flash Developer Center  as a starting point for learning the basics of Flash.

Flash CS3 / ActionScript 3.0

  • Flash Tools for Developers: 3D Graphers in ActionScript 3, by Barbara Kaskosz and Doug Ensley. (Posted August 19, 2007)

    This Flash Forum article describes classes for 3D graphing revised for AS 3. Along with class files and documentation, we provide several templates to show how to use the classes for graphs of functions of two variables as well as parametrically defined surfaces.

  • Flash Tools for Developers (AS3): Graphing Curves in the Plane, by Barbara Kaskosz and Doug Ensley. (Posted July 2, 2007)

    This Flash Forum article includes source code and modification instructions that will allow you to customize a basic one-variable function grapher and an applet that graphs parametric curves on the plane in either rectangular or polar coordinates. It has been revised for Actionscript 3 and Flash CS3.

Flash 8 / ActionScript 2.0

This Flash Forum article includes source code and instructions for building an applet that allows the user to enter expressions with up to four parameters and then to vary the parameters in order to fit the curve to user data.

This Flash Forum article includes source code and instructions for building a truth table applet and other applications requiring parsing and evaluation of logical expressions.

This Flash Forum article includes source code and modification instructions that will allow you to customize an applet that graphs surfaces in space.

This Flash Forum article includes source code and modification instructions that will allow you to customize a basic one-variable function grapher.


This project is supported by NSF DUE-0535327 and the Mathematical Sciences Digital Ligrary, a project of the Mathematical Association of America.

MathDL Flash Forum - Sharing Area

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

This part of the Flash Forum consists of examples of Flash programming for math and science teaching with documentation including shared source code.  New submissions and creative variations on these materials are welcome. 

Just submit your material as a URL to Doug Ensley, DCR Editor and indicate that you are willing to share your source code.

  • Terminator. Bruce Yoshiwara, Los Angeles Pierce College. Download the Flash 8 source code within this zipped folder. You may need to right-click on the link to save the file before you can open it.
  • Visualizing Regions for Double Integrals. Barbara Kaskosz and Lewis Pakula, University of Rhode Island. Download the Flash 8 source code within this zipped folder. You may need to right-click on the link to save the file before you can open it.
  • Projectile Motion Simulation. C. Jay Hutchings and Nadina Duran-Hutchings, Texas A & M University - Corpus Christi. Download the Flash MX source (.fla) file here. You may need to right-click on the link to save the file before you can open it.

MathDL Flash Forum - Contributing to the MathDL Flash Forum

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

The MathDL Flash Forum is an NSF funded project that is supported by MathDL.  If you are an expert in Flash, other technology development, or in educational pedagogy, there are some valuable contributions that you can make to the Flash Forum

  1. Try some of this material out yourself and post comments to the discussion forum for that particular item. You can download a 30 day trial copy of the latest Flash authoring program for this purpose as you simultaneously try out the material on the Flash Forum.
  2. Read the comments posted by others and respond if you have the relevant expertise in applet development, Flash programming, or classroom pedagogy.
  3. Submit your own well-documented source code to Doug Ensley, Loci Resources Editor (deensley@ship.edu). This will be reviewed by knowledgeable Flash developers for eventual posting in the Forum.

This project is supported by NSF DUE-0535327 and the Mathematical Sciences Digital Ligrary, a project of the Mathematical Association of America.

MathDL Flash Forum - About the Forum Moderators

Author(s): 
Douglas Ensley, Barbara Kaskosz

The moderators of the MathDL Flash Forum are Barbara Kaskosz (bkaskosz@math.uri.edu) of the University of Rhode Island and Doug Ensley (deensl@ship.edu ) of Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.  Each of these individuals welcomes e-mail comments, questions or suggestions about this site or about Flash development, in general.

Biographical Information

Barbara Kaskosz is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rhode Island.  Her work with Flash is focused on using visualization to understand concepts in calculus, and it can be found at http://www.math.uri.edu/~bkaskosz/flashmo/.

Doug Ensley is Professor of Mathematics at Shippensburg University. His work with Flash is focused on Discrete Mathematics, and it can be found at http://webspace.ship.edu/deensley/DiscreteMath/, the companion site to his Discrete Mathematics textbook coauthored with J. Winston Crawley and published by John Wiley & Sons.

This project is supported by NSF DUE-0535327 and the Mathematical Sciences Digital Library, a project of the Mathematical Association of America.