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---------------------------------------- Application : !Tables Author: Richard Sharpe Help for Version 1.20 : (June 1995) ---------------------------------------- Getting Started --------------- Couldn't be simpler really. Double click to install !Tables on the icon bar. Click on the icon to open a LogOn window, enter your name and press return or click on <OK>. By default this will open a 5 X 5 grid and the Options window. Choose your @%config#Configuration from the Options window. Click on 'Start' button and green numbers will fill the yellow boxes. Also the Options window will close. From this moment the clock is on, so you can fill in the table, pressing <Return> or <Tab> to move on to the next cell. If you make an error, pressing <Return> or <Tab> will result in your incorrect answer being removed and the caret being positioned so that you can have another go. Configuration ------------- 1. Grid Size You have a choice of a 5 x 5 grid or a 10 x 10 grid. Clicking on the appropriate radio icon will open the window of your choice. Personally I think that the 10 x 10 grid is a bit big. The children tend to find it a little daunting and I hardly ever use it. But I have left it in in case anyone finds it useful. 2. Order of Difficulty Here there is a choice of three radio icons and an option button. Fully ordered ------------- This is obviously the easiest as the numbers will always be in ascending order. The number limits will depend on the Min/Max Limits. Partially Random ---------------- This setting gives randomly generated numbers within the given range but repeats the same set of numbers on each axis. Fully Random ------------ This setting gives different randomly generated sets of numbers within the given range on each axis. Allow Negatives --------------- This setting can be either on or off with any of the above settings. When the button is off, it is impossible to select negative number limits and when subtracting you are in fact only finding the absolute difference between the numbers. When the button is on you can select negatives and subtraction is directional. 3. Min/Max Values Clicking on the various bump icons allows you to choose the upper and lower limits for the numbers in the grid. The minimum difference between upper and lower limit is 4 and the maximum is 9. 4. Operators This allows you to choose your operator. The only thing that needs expaining here is the peculiarity with @%neg#negative numbers. The Logs -------- View Logs There are two Logs to consider. 1. The student log It is important that the student is able to monitor his/her own progress (Supported Self Study!) and to this end I have provided a log of the students progress which is very easy to access and is only available to the person who is logged on at that time. This is accessed by the student by clicking on the <View Student Log> button at the bottom of the Options window. It contains the following data. 1. Name of student 2. Date and time of log on. 3. Gridsize 4. Order of Difficulty 5. Limits 6. Negatives allowed? 7. Any errors made 8. Time taken to complete grid ------------------------------- 2. The teacher log The teacher log contains all of this information for all of the students who have used the program since the teacher log was last deleted. The teacher log can be viewed or deleted from the Icon Bar Menu This is what you will find on the Icon Bar menu. ------------------------------------------------ 1. Info Info does what Info always does. If you do not know what this is then please consult a RISCOS User Guide. 2. Help If you are reading this you have probably discovered what Help does. 3. Set Password To reset the Password click on the Set Password item in the Bar menu. This will open a window with three writable icons. In the first one you must type the current Password. If this is correct the caret will go down to the second in which you should type the new password. This is then repeated in the third icon. The reason for this is that if you make a typing error you would never be able to access the Log again, so your new password is verified by being typed twice. 4. View Log Type in the current teacher password and press return. This will open the teacher log, which can be perused at leisure and saved as a text file if desired. 5. Delete Log Typing the teacher password in this window and pressing return will delete the teacher log permanently. Make sure that you want to do this as you get no second chances. 6. Quit Quit, like Info, does what Quit, not Info, always does. Password -------- By default the password is Woodpecker. This is because Tom Robbins has written a new book and I am happy again. I suggest that you change it immediately as denying your students access to this help file is your only other alternative and that would be silly. The security is not watertight but why should it be. Any student who can crack it deserves quite a commendation. Perhaps that would qualify as a piece of GCSE coursework! Please note that all passwords are case sensitive. Why did I write !Tables? ------------------------ Whilst Computers, Calculators and Cockcroft, not necessarily in that order, have irreversibly improved the lot of the humble Mathematics teacher, paving the way for us to make the subject more fun than it ever was and accessible to many more children than was the case in days of yore, (is this sentence getting out of hand or what?!) one thing remains a problem, the children and, unfortunately, some misguided teachers, believe that it is no longer necessary to learn their tables. Few would dispute, or at any rate if they would, they would be wrong, that the learning 'by heart' of a poem inevitably enhances the enjoyment of said literary structure and the same applies to multiplication tables. How much fun is Number Theory going to be if you have to dig out a calculator to discover what is the highest power of 2 which goes into 56! Personally I do not think that learning tables is the funnest thing in the repertoire but that doesn't detract from its importance. Some of us just have to get it into our little skulls that the myth that everything in life has to be fun fun fun, is a load of complete and utter horse manure. I am quotable on this point and will stick with my metaphor! So I decided to write a 'Drill' program and try it out on the children and the interesting and surprising thing to report on that front is that they enjoy using it. So here is something to please liberal P.C. wets and authoritarian little Nazis alike! Get it on your school network and see the difference! All comments, criticism (constructive please!), money etc. to: Richard Sharpe 5 Camberwell Terrace Leamington Spa Warwickshire CV31 1LP Tel: 01926 422040 LICENCE ------- Version 1.01 February 1995 Written by and copyright © 1994,1995 R. L. B. Sharpe This application is SHAREWARE. If you find it useful you are required to register. (Within 30 days of first using it) You may distribute the UNREGISTERED version to whoever you like as long as you leave the application intact and you make the recipient aware of the application's SHAREWARE status. *** REGISTRATION IS £5.00 for individuals, £10.00 for a school.*** Registration is so that I know who's using the application and hopefully get some feedback. Also I spent a lot of time on it and want to be appreciated! The advantages of Registering and paying the far from exorbitant fee are as follows: 1. You will not be breaking the law. 2. You will encourage me to write more educational software at low cost. 3. You will make me ecstatically happy. 4. You will be entitled to free upgrades (for a while at least!) 5. You will have the opportunity to tell me how to make the program better! 6. You will have the opportunity to suggest other projects that you desire an author for. DISTRIBUTION ------------ You may distribute the UNREGISTERED version of this program to anyone you like so long as you pass on the whole application icluding ALL of the files in the application directory. You may not alter any of the files in any way nor may you claim to have written any of the code. Send your money, name, address, telephone number, comment, criticisms and anything else you like to me: Richard Sharpe 5 Camberwell Terrace Leamington Spa Warwickshire CV31 1LP Tel: 01926 422040 CREDITS ------- The Wimp Procedure Library that I used was written by Paul Hobbs and is part of his excellent !EventShell package. I appended it to the program using !Blib which is likewise a very fine piece of work by Ian Palmer. It was then well and truly squashed using !Shrink-PD by John Wallace. 
