Calvert Hall’s John Thaler teaches Calculus while 
recovering from surgery
3/9/12 – Towson, MD — John Thaler, a member of the mathematics department at Calvert Hall, is currently at home recovering from surgery. Although not in the classroom, he’s still able to instruct his Calculus III class by using Skype. The school’s IT Department installed Skype, a utility software called ManyCam that allows multiple cameras, and a document camera at John’s home in Perry Hall. Software and another webcam were installed in John’s multimedia enabled classroom at the school. As class time approaches, John opens Skype and waits for a video call from Joseph Baker, the school’s Assistant Principal and also a member of the math department. John uses the document camera to show the students the notes on the topic throughout class. They are able to interact with one another and the transition to a Calculus class taught using Skype has been smooth. The current topic for the class is gradients of functions of more than 1 variable and next week, John plans to teach maximums and minimums of such functions.