Nawlins

How-dee, y'all!

I'm just back from the city where creole and cajun cookery reign in the kitchen, where Zydeco music blares from nearly every storefront, where Bourbon Street flows with cheap liquor and smells like things unmentionable.

And where nearly 6,000 mathematicians assembled for the past few days to meet and greet and hash over the latest advances in mathematics and math pedagogy.

I had a chance to meet up with a HUGE number of friends, faculty, and colleagues from graduate school, and from my postdoc at UIUC (hello to all the Vandy/Illinois folks, especially Nikola up in Maine, one of my most regular readers!), and to meet a passel of new folks who share my interest in developing and implementing alternative pedagogical methods.

The session on writing and discussing mathematics in which I spoke about the writing component of our recently-completed MATH 365 was fantastic. I got a number of great ideas for group writing exercises and projects, some of which I hope to soon incorporate into my courses.

My mind is still awash, and not yet fully unpacked, so it'll be a little while before I assemble all my thoughts on these matters.

More to come soon, though, I promise...