1. Stevens Institute of Technology West Point Military Academy
Using Technology as a Teaching/Research Tool in a Special Topics Course in Differential Equations
Lawrence E. Levine
Stevens Institute of Technology
and
West Point Military Academy

2. Using Technology in Teaching
Web and Distance Learning
Use in classroom
State of the art classroom
Laptops
Wireless connections
Software to monitor students’ laptops
Scientific Notebook

3. What Do You Do With All of This?
Prepare lecture notes using SNB
Have students work in class and monitor their work
Project the work of a student for all to see
Have students make presentations
Involve the student

4. Course Use of Technology I
Presentation of material
Review of basic techniques to solve Des
Infinite series
Series solution near an ordinary point
Method of Frobenius
Boundary value problems, Fourier series
Separation of variables for PDEs

5. Course Use of Technology II
Research Tool
Polynomial solutions of nonhomogeneous DEs
Chebyshev, Hermite, Legendre, Laguerre equations with right hand side
What initial conditions yield a polynomial solution?
Maple kernel in SNB will solve initial value problem
By looking at examples one attempts to guess the general case
Then one proves that this is indeed the result.

6. Another Approach Want a polynomial solution
In these equations recurrence relation has “step 2”
Set expression for equal to zero
Work backwards to get the initial conditions.