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I teach middle and high school math. From time to time I have ideas for little applets that I would like for my students to be able to use and explore. Sometimes I'm able to create these in mathematics software packages, like GeoGebra or Mathematica. Other times, the project is beyond my (current) capacities.

I could learn more programming, and I'm interested in doing so. I could of course ask someone local. But sometimes I've had the thought that crowd sourcing such projects would be both fun and useful. Does anyone know of a good forum for this to happen in? Is this stackexchange a good one?

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  • You can have better solutions at math.stackexchange.com. Also, you could have a chat with the math guys. There are a lot of them over there.
    – Ubermensch
    Feb 17, 2012 at 4:08
  • And if you want to learn programming (for teaching and researching maths), start with Python. Its free, got a lot of math libraries and you could be up and running in a few hours. Also, you have a real nice blog
    – Ubermensch
    Feb 17, 2012 at 4:15
  • @Ubermensch Thanks for the advice. I started in on Python last summer but made little headway before other projects took over. I should get back to it. So I guess this is not the right forum for this question or this topic, then?
    – user47930
    Feb 17, 2012 at 4:47

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It really depends on what you mean by "crowdsourcing." Stack Exchange works when you have a a specific question you need you need an expert answer to:

  • If you're looking to get help for yourself with specific programming issues in code, ask on Stack Overflow.

  • If you need help understanding or solving higher-level conceptual issues in software development, ask here.

  • If you're an a computer science educator and want to ask questions about how best to teach students in the field, consider contributing to the Computer Science Education site proposal.

However, it's not a jobs board or a way to get people to do exercises you prescribe or request. These things are outside the scope of the platform:

  • Asking questions of your students in a structured format

  • Getting help with critiques of your work or ideas

  • Providing an idea and expecting people to code it for you

The key distinction being that on Stack Exchange, you're expected to do the work yourself: the answers you receive are merely facilitators towards that. For getting people to do work for you, consider looking at any of the multitudes of job boards out there, including the one Stack Exchange offers, Careers 2.0.

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