Welcome to Honors Finite Mathematics!
I know this isn't the way most of us would choose to conduct our class, but we will make sure that you are able to fully learn this course's content, and hopefully have some fun along the way! We will begin our year fully online and transition to in-person class whenever the school says it is appropriate for us to do so. In the meantime, I want you to know that I believe this can still be a great experience for you, even while we are online.

Check this website or Schoology daily for course information
I will post course information on both this website and in our course in Schoology, so please check either of these daily for the latest information on this course. Both will have the same information except that I'll only post copyrighted information, solutions/answer keys, and Google Meet links in Schoology.

Daily online lessons which are very close to what happens in-person
We will hold a Google Meet online every school day during our scheduled time to meet according to the school bell schedule. During this time, I will present material to you online using a Smartboard presentation and tablet/stylus so I can write 'on the board' the same way I would if we were in a physical classroom. There will be various times during the lesson where I'll ask you to participate, usually by trying to work a problem, and this will be interactive - where I look for comments typed in the Google Meet 'chat' text to indicate when people are done working a problem.

There will also be times when you'll have the opportunity to ask questions either through your microphone or by typing in the 'chat' text. So even though we are online this will be very much like what would occur in class as far as the academics are concerned. My goal is for you us to have an experience as close to being in the physical classroom as possible :)

Attendance and participation
The school requires me to take attendance every day by noting who is logged in to the Google Meet session at various times. I know that in reality there is always a chance that a student can log in, but then have their attention elsewhere or even leave the room entirely. I will not spend a lot of time trying to monitor this...instead, I will endeavor to construct an online class experience which you will find so helpful and necessary that you will naturally stay engaged.

We are still working out the details of how assessments will be conducted. I suspect that whatever we come up with will not be as valid as our usual in-person unit tests, and there may be a temptation to share information with other students or work collaboratively on assessments, even when this is prohibited. I want to caution everyone that this course very much builds on itself - to understand things later on in the course, you must understand earlier course information well. Taking the easy way out in order to improve your grade will hurt your ability to do well as we get further into the course.

Also, at some point we will presumably be able to return to in-person school, and at that point we would begin using proctored, in-person unit tests as we usually do. It would not be a good thing if our first in-person test ends up being the first time you take a test in this class without assistance from classmates.

Recommend getting a textbook from the DV bookstore
Homework for this course is out of our textbook, so it makes it easier for you if you have a physical copy of the textbook (although I will post scans of the homework pages from the textbook in Schoology for times when you don't have your textbook available). The textbook also provides an explanation for the topics covered in our classes which can be helpful, especially if you are absent and miss a lesson.

This course is a great bridge between precalculus/honors algebra 2 and calculus!
This course is primarily focused on expanding on the math you learned last year in honors algebra 2 or precalculus, quickly reviewing concepts and procedures from last year, but then focusing on how to apply those concepts to real-world situations, essentialy a precalculus-applications course! Many students find that with a quick reminder, last year's concepts come back quickly and are solidified and extended, which provides excellent preparation for an introduction to brief calculus in 2nd semester. Brief Calculus focuses on learning the most important and useful ideas from calculus with an emphasis on conceptual understanding and application.