In the typical introductory course difficulties are often encountered with students not understanding what the graphs of functions look like, what derivatives are and how to set up Newton's second law. MAPLEV allows one to graph functions easily and to also set up equations in English. What follows is an example of how one can use MAPLEVas a computation machine that can help to alleviate students' difficulties with these problems. All the lines in bold and beginning with > represent MAPLEV commands. One tells MAPLEV to end a line with either a colon or a semi-colon. The colon suppresses the "output" while the semi-colon tells MAPLEV to show the output.

It is wise to begin by having MAPLEV restart so that any unwanted things that are maintained by the system are removed. This is especially important if you wish to have students change variables as a part of the exercise.

Additional examples of simple applications of MAPLEV can be found at Mike Moloney's packet page. There you will find a set of six examples of MAPLEV usage. They are labeled easy 1, 2, 3 and Fancy 1, 2, 3 and are located in the middle of the page.

If you decide to implementMAPLEV into your course, you must find ways to incorporate it on a weekly basis. If you don't, the students will not get over the hump of being familiar with the package.