A guide for contributors of DA
Are you interested in giving a class in Dedekind’s Army? Be welcome to our step-by-step guide of what to do, with some advices from our seasoned lecturers!
We are truly enthusiastic about new people giving lectures, no matter what their level of experience is. So do not be afraid of trying, and remember that you can contact us for further help.
Pick a topic!
The first thing you should do is figure out what do you want to talk about. It may be about anything, as long as it has some relation to math, and does not require strong background.
Here are some ideas of how to choose something:
- Pick up a book from the library. First chapters can be transformed in really engaging lectures.
- Read a paper about your favorite topic and try to figure out how would you explain it to somebody else. If the paper is new, you may try contacting the author to help you clarify some details. Most will be pleased to help if you show interest in their work!
- Choose an interesting exercise or theorem and toy with it. This kind of exercise can be really fun and you will end up with some new results to present. Try enough times and you may end up publishing something.
- Was there any theorem you had trouble understanding in the past? Many times teachers are forced to skip valuable intuitions. You may take some time to develop an intuition and presenting it to others.
Let us know!
Once you have chosen your lecture topic, you should drop us a mail with the following items:
- Your name and surname
- An abstract in English of the lecture’s contents. The contents of the talk do not have to be set on stone, but people will look at this to decide if they are interested in coming, so try giving a general idea of what it is going to be about.
- (optional) a paragraph about you to be featured in our about section
You should also fill our availability poll if you haven’t done so yet so that we can pick a time that suits you for the talk.
Prepare the lecture!
First of all, get some material about the subject and decide what are you going to include. Stick to things that require few prerequisites. You can assume that the assistants will be comfortable with formal math, but make no assumptions about their background knowledge.
If you are unsure of what to cover, try asking yourself how would you summarize in a paragraph what you would like somebody to learn from the talk. Focusing on concrete ideas helps filtering the essentials.
Once you have a summary of what you would like to cover make sure that the length of the talk is about an hour. In our experience, getting the time right is one of the trickiest things.
Also, do not forget to practice! Even a simulation in your head will help you to better structure the talk and give a fantastic lecture.
Follow up!
After the lecture is done you can follow up with some contributions in the webpage.
For example, you can:
- Answer interesting questions that came up during the lecture.
- Make some notes and other resources (code, images, bibliography) about the lecture available. Making some LaTeX notes, an article on Arbital or creating some content in Mathifold are all great ways to do so.
And that is all! Leave a comment or write us a mail if you have any questions.
We hope we will see some great contributions through the year. Thank you for making DA possible!