LaTeX for high school students? And writing LaTeX online?

[Christopher W. Ryan]

"filenames like “x-finally_final.docx” ;-)"  LOL. Yes, this! So true!  I
see it at work all the time too.

There has been some writing in cyberspace (on this forum, perhaps? I
can't remember) about how the younger folks have little understanding of
directory structure and "file discipline". They just throw anything
anywhere and rely on "Finder" (or equivalent). Perhaps enculturated
gradually by Google search.  But I digress.

Thanks for the insights about LaTeX in schools. Very helpful as I think
about things.

--Chris


Marei Peischl via texhax wrote:
> 
> On 26.10.22 05:28, Christopher W. Ryan via texhax wrote:
>> I've always thought it might be useful for students to learn something
>> of LaTeX in high school and arrive at college  able, to some extent, to
>> write papers and beamer slides in it. In contrast to some of them
>> learning it *in* college. No need to belabor the virtues of writing in
>> LaTeX here, obviously. So why not introduce interested or curious high
>> school students to it, especially (but not only) those who have some
>> inkling to pursue scientific/mathematical/technical fields?
>>
>> I have this crazy idea to offer introductory LaTeX workshops to high
>> schools that are interested.  If nothing else, it might help keep me
>> busy after retirement.
> I'd not call that a crazy idea.
>>
>> As far as I know, at least in my area of the US, this is not currently
>> being done. Does anyone have any experience doing this? Is it a fool's
>> errand?
> 
> I did a bunch of workshops or courses with highshool students in
> Germany. Those groups were either aged 12–14 or 15+. With the younger
> ones I actually started doing some beamer presentations and made them
> present those within the group afterwards. Which turned out to work
> better than simple text documents.
> 
> The workshops have been either organized by the schools or by local
> hackerspaces and none was forced to do.
> 
> It worked quite well, but the learnings have been much better when the
> students really got encouraged to use it within some school projects
> afterwards. So I also started to involve other teachers in this. Which
> is a bit more complicated since most stick to MS Office. But wherever it
> was possible the teachers also started to be more interested in LaTeX
> themselves.
> 
> Additionally I started to add some small git introduction. (Just
> pull/commit/push) This was also catching some teachers who got used to
> filenames like “x-finally_final.docx” ;-)
> 
>> And are there websites where one can compose a complete LaTeX source
>> document and compile it, obtaining pdf output?  Many under-resources
>> schools in the US, where students are unlikely to have their own
>> computers at home, provide locked-down Chromebooks to all their
>> students. They are unable to install any software on them.
> 
> We either installed a TeX Live locally on the students' laptops, on the
> school's computers or created a local installation of the Overleaf
> Community Edition. Both worked quite well. I usually prefer a local
> installation to keep the students independent and they can also use it
> afterwards outside school.
> 
> The use of the community edition was mostly due to privacy concerns. So
> we needed to host it ourselves.
> 
> We also had the idea of making the students edit within a git server web
> IDE, this didn't work that well. They got mostly confused by the waiting
> time for the CI pipeline in the background. But was worth a try.
> 
> I hope this helps and would really love to see more highschool students
> workshops for LaTeX :)
> 
> Best,
> 
> Marei
> 
> 
>>
>> Appreciate any insights, experiences, opinions, or advice.
>>
>> --Chris Ryan