Last June, Viviane Pons participated to the Research School ECCO 2016. She was there representing OpenDreamKit to lead two Sage sessions: introducing Sage to the students in relations to the combinatorial courses they were following.
The school welcomed 130 participants from very diverse mathematical background: undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and professors. Each Sage sessions had 50 students working on the School computers using Live USB keys. The keys were chosen to get a very quick setup (less than 10 minutes) allowing the students to start working on the sage tutorials as soon as possible. They are a very good solutions in countries where Internet connexion does not allow for massive cloud usage. As a result, the students could spend their time working on the tutorials: from basic introduction to more advanced combinatorics exercises. It was a real success! Many students brought a copy of the live USB key home so that they would have their own copy of the software.
The conference as a whole was a very rewarding experience: doing a great job promoting inclusivity and diversity. These are values we share at OpenDreamKit and we were happy to be part of it. Viviane Pons wrote a post on her blog describing her experience there. This was then re-pubiblished on the AMS Blog, On teaching and learning Mathematics.
The course material can be found on Viviane Pons’s webpage.
Workshops and Conferences SageMath WP2: Dissemination Diversity