The Mathematical ActionScript Toolkit (MAST) is an ongoing project that has over the year and a half since its start allowed several students to make transitions to professional life from their academic work in engineering, science, and mathematics. The emphasis of the MAST effort is on developing web-deployable applications. The applications are developed in the framework of the Participatory Learning Model (PLM), which designates the following general points of methodology:
When an application is developed, the application embodies an exploration of mathematics, science, engineering, or art pursued by the student who is the primary developer of the application.
The goal of the application development effort is to create something that can be reconstructed by others, so the primary developer must concentrate both of developing the application and keeping track of the development effort to the extent that, when it is completed, a comprehensive lab can be written that shows others how it can be recreated.
In addition to writing a lab on how to rebuild what has been built, the primary developer faces the responsibility of isolating the features of the application that embody specific mathematical, scientific, or engineering knowledge. Having isolated this functionality, the primary developer can then create a lab supplement known as a Subject Opportunity Worksheet (SOW), which provides a specific review of the primary concepts that motivated the primary developer to begin work on the project.
The MAST effort manifests itself as a form of social networking, for the projects that are developed are posted on the MAST website, which includes blogging capabilities. The project as posted includes the source code and art, the lab that guides a participant in reconstruction of the application, and the SOW.
As is explained in the sections that follow, each participant in the MAST effort is working on one or more applications. The application address mathematics (especially first-year calculus), biology, and computer science, which are three two primary areas of exploration currently pursued by the MAST team. Ryan Schilt is developing a complex simulation of a cell with emphasis on tracing the process of endocytosis. Katherine Peterson is both supplementing Ryan’s effort by developing computational lab kits biology students can use to supplement their physical labs and, in a separate effort—one affiliated with the efforts Toby Jones and Jake Smith— an application that investigates mathematics typical of first semester calculus. Jake Smith’s efforts are geared toward testing the applications others develop, and his project includes working with high school and college students to determine the efficacy and suitability of the applications for different learning needs. Toby Jones is concentrating on primary development efforts in a number of mathematical contexts that typify first semester calculus. Pavel Zelinsky has chosen to work with a graphical application that explores implementation of a spline, and one ambition he has voiced is to improve on the default spline class of ActionScript. To the efforts of the others, Alysia Davis adds artistic artifacts. Her work in this respect ranges from graphical representations of cells and features of cells to any graphical object that is useful in any of the mathematical applications.