PROGRAMMING ONE’S OWN STAND-ALONE TEACHING AIDS FOR STUDENTS OF MATHEMATICAL SUBJECTS

The article encourages teachers to program their own applications – mathematical teaching aids. It discusses the issue of teaching aids for students in mathematical subjects from the point of view of their accessibility, i.e. especially what software equipment students are required to use in order to actually use the aids. A number of aids require that either specialized mathematical software such as Maple, MATLAB or Mathematica is installed at the client computer – i.e. that the student bought a license of the software, or that specialized software is installed at the university server(s). The article focuses on situations when neither of the conditions is possible. Comments on programming teaching aids which can be used with minimum requirements at the client side (typically Internet connection only) are included. First, the overview of possibilities is given. Later, the issue of PHP based applications is explored. The article includes examples of existing teaching aids prepared by a non-programmer.