@kellis1 @ashley.segalla @tspahn @jeusea
Beginning to set up chapter 2 section 1.
Cut and pasted the first section into Pressbooks from the word documents provided by the author.
This is what I have done:
Wrote learning objectives
I think that the two examples should be deleted or moved to later in the chapter because it seems odd to me to present a difficult problem before even defining a topic.
Should we use the provided textboxes from dropdown menus for examples, key concepts, learning objectives, etc?
Should we split this section into two parts, one for 2x2 systems and one for 3x3 systems. This section seems dense in information.
Do we want answers to exercises to follow the question or show up at the end of the section? Or somehow be interactive with a “click here” for the answer?
In some examples, particularly the later ones, Lippmann skips several steps in the solving of equations. Do we want to go back and include more steps?
@rbroussard3 @kellis1 @tspahn
I finished editing the LaTex part of the Section 2.4. I’m going to walk away from it for a little bit, then go back and double check things. If anyone checks it before I do and sees big mistakes that I need to fix, please let me know!
One problem that I’m finding when coding some of the longer equations is that the line goes out of the box. It happened some in Section 1.5 and in Section 2.4. Is there a way to make the font smaller, or is there another way to deal with the problem?
I’m just seeing this post, Renae, so I’m going to answer the questions we didn’t talk about last night:
I see what you’re saying about the examples at the beginning. I think the purpose is to show “This is what kinds of problems you can solve with this topic,” but it bothers me that the problem is never actually worked out in the section. I think we should consider either removing the intro problems completely, or find a place to show the solutions. If we choose to keep them, in Section 2.4, I’d like to change the word problem at the beginning that talks about Nancy’s bonds to something related to Louisiana. I’m completely drawing a blank on what it should be, so I’ll keep thinking about it, but if anyone has any ideas, let me know.
For the answers to the exercises, I’ve been including them in the “Exercises” box, but I’m not opposed to a “click here” option or moving them to the end. If we keep them in the box, I’ve been putting “Solution: ___”
I think it’s ok to have steps skipped, as long as you can still follow what is happening in the problem.
Hey @elizabeth.kelly ! In Chapter 2, we created a section called Matrix Calculator, where students can work the problem using the Desmos matrix calculator. When you go to this section from the Contents link, it takes you to the bottom of the page, and I think it is because of the embedded Desmos calculators in the Exercises that have to load when the page opens. Do you know if there is a way (maybe html coding?) to make it so the page opens to the top, rather than loading each embedded calculator and starting the reader at the bottom of the page?
@jeusea @emily.frank @kaitlin
Do you know if any of the other groups are having this problem, and if so, is there a solution?
I see what you mean and don’t know of this being an issue elsewhere. Let me chat with Elizabeth about this!
Sorry I am just seeing this – I haven’t been getting notifications, but I should be now.
I haven’t come across this before, and I’m not seeing any other examples of Pressbooks titles with a Desmos calculated embedded. Instead, others seem to be linking to the matrix calculator externally. Have you come across any examples where it’s not jumping? There seems to be something in the iframe that’s jumping to the last cursor input on the page. I’m going to reach out to Pressbooks and see if they know of a fix. Stay tuned!
Thank you! I’ve only noticed this when we embed outside links. It happens in the TVM Solver section as well at the end of Chapter 4, where we used the iframe to embed a Geogebra calculator. We could make it so that the calculators are external, but I liked the idea of having the calculators accessible in the exercises so that students could read the problem and input the necessary information to get the answer without having to flip back and forth between pages.
That makes sense to me! Hopefully we figure out a solution. I’ll let you know when I hear back from Pressbooks.
Hi @elizabeth.kelly
I’m not sure why this worked, but I created a section for the statistics calculator in Chapter 8 using the same coding from the other sections, and it’s working correctly. I was even able to create anchors in the section to link problems in the rest of Chapter 8 to the appropriate exercise or example in the calculator section. I’m not sure what the difference is between this section and the TVM Solver/Matrix Calculator sections.
That’s good! I think it’s because the statistics calculator doesn’t automatically add a cursor in the entry field like the matrix calculator does. I heard back an initial response from Pressbooks; they are going to test out different ways to hide the calculator on page load so the cursor doesn’t automatically jump to one of the calculator entry fields. I tested it out myself in this junk chapter, but it’s still jumping to the bottom. Hopefully they find a solution!
Hi @ashley.segalla
I heard back from Pressbooks, and this was their response:
"The closest thing I’ve found is something that I’m not sure would be compatible with the intended formatting for chapters in this book, but I’ll mention in case. In Appearance > Theme Options > Web Options, there’s a setting to collapse sections throughout a book which turns all heading 1s in every page into this:
While this setting is enabled, including a calculator below an h1 prevents the jump on initial page load. It’s only when the + sign is clicked to expand the section that the cursor moves to the calculator in that section. There could be a section for each calculator embed, although each section would be its own entry in the two-level Table of Contents and all existing h1s would become collapsible h1s."
More info here. This would affect your entire book; would that be an option?
Another solution that I came across was adding onLoad=“self.scrollTo(0,0)” to the iframe code for each calculator. This tells the page to jump back to the top when the iframe has finished loading. I have the code currently added to all of the calculators in the Matrix Calculator chapter so you can test it out. I don’t love it, because it does briefly scroll down the page as the calculators load before jumping back to the top. But I think it is better than having the page load at the bottom like it was before.
What do you think?
Hi @elizabeth.kelly
I’m finding that the page stays at the top when you click on the Matrix Calculator section with the onLoad=“self.scrollTo(0,0)” added to the iframe code. The only time it jumps is when I click on the anchor in Section 2.2, Example 4 where it says “To work this problem with the calculator, click here.” I added an anchor in the Matrix Calculator section a while back to see if I could make that work. When you click the link, it takes you to the example, then jumps to the top before jumping back to the example. It’s not perfect, but I think it is much better than how I had it originally. Thank you for your help!
1 Like
Great! Glad I could help.
Hey @elizabeth.kelly
I’m back at it with the same issue. I tried adding the onLoad=“self.scrollTo(0,0)” code to all the calculators in TVM Solver, but it seems that it won’t save in the code. It keeps deleting that part of the code and jumping through loading each calculator like it was doing before. The same seems to be happening in the Matrix Calculator section. I looked at the option to collapse sections, but it looks like if we do that it’ll collapse all heading 1s throughout the whole book, not just that one section, so I don’t think that’s a great option. Where did you add the code to the matrix calculators to make it work last week? I’d like to try that again.
Well that is extremely frustrating! It looks like if I make any edits in the visual editor after adding the onLoad=“self.scrollTo(0,0)” code, it disappears. If I only do edits in the text editor, it seems to stick. Pressbooks said that there was no support for adding javascript to a chapter and that’s what this code is, so I think this is expected behavior. If you still want to use this fix, and since you all will probably need to continue working on this (and other Desmos calculator) chapters, it might be best to wait and add the onLoad code once you’re finishing the book up. I should be able to do a find and replace to add it to all Desmos iframes throughout the book, if needed. Just shoot me a reminder if that’s how you’d like to proceed.
To add to the TM Solver calculator, you will need to go to the text editor and add the code in the <iframe> tag. The <iframe> tags also have some junk tags in the middle that might be contributing to the issue, so I’m also deleting those. So, for example, the first on initially was:
<iframe src="https://www.geogebra.org/classic/mvv2nus2" width="600px" height="500px" frameborder="1" marginwidth="0px" marginheight="0px" scrolling="no"><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="width: 0px;overflow: hidden;line-height: 0" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span></iframe>
and is now
<iframe src="https://www.geogebra.org/classic/mvv2nus2" width="600px" height="500px" frameborder="1" marginwidth="0px" marginheight="0px" scrolling="no" onLoad="self.scrollTo(0,0)"></iframe>
I went ahead and did all of them but it looks like this fix doesn’t work for the GeoGebra calculator. I do see some discussion board posts with others saying they have the same issue, but no one seems to have found a fix for it. These may need to just be external links instead of embeds.
You are correct that the H1 collapse would then function across the whole book, so probably not viable.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have the calculators as external links. I also wouldn’t mind only having one at the top embedded, then provide the external link for each exercise. I’ll talk to the group about it, and we’ll make a decision. Thanks for your help!
1 Like
