Making Digital Geometry Content Available For Math Education Throughout Europe
Schwäbisch Gmünd, Oct/Nov 2007
Interactive Geometry is a way to improve mathematics education with
the help of a computer. Using sophisticated software, sketches and
figures can be brought to life, comparable to what movies mean to
images.
Although many examples of class materials that were created using
Interactive Geometry Software exist, interactive geometry software is
still not used regularly in classrooms. In fact, many teachers do not
know about the new possibilities, or they do not have access to the
necessary software and geometry resources.
The EU-co-funded project Intergeo will create a web portal with
interactive geometry resources to attack the three main barriers for a
EU-wide adoption of the existing material: missing search facilities,
lack of interoperability, and missing quality information.
The available content will be enriched with curricular Meta-data
that makes it easy to find the proper examples for a certain teaching
situation. The intellectual property rights for the content will be
cleared. Teachers should not have to bother whether they are allowed to
redistribute material to their students or not.
Also, a common file format for interactive geometry software will be
provided. Because the project consortium includes leading commercial
and open source software suppliers for interactive geometry this format
will enable teachers to use the content regardless of which software
they use.
Finally, experts and practitioners in mathematics education will
rate material for its classroom suitability. This data, as well as
additional comments, will be available to users of the web portal.
Users can also add their own ratings and comments.
Teachers all over Europe will be able to use and re-use quality
teaching material. The project partners already identified more than
3000 resources that will serve as an initial seed for the database.
User contributions to it are highly encouraged, both for content and
quality assessment.
The project involves contact persons from governments and national
centers for education, as well as curriculum experts. Software and
content providers as well as people working in math education can join
the project as associate partners. After the official project duration
of three years the infrastructure will be transferred to the public for
a sustainable success of the initiative.
Project Consortium
- Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd (D)
- Université Montpellier II (F)
- Deutsches Forschungszentrum für künstliche Intelligenz, DFKI (Saarbrücken,D)
- Cabrilog S.A.S. (Grenoble, F)
- Universität Bayreuth (D)
- Université du Luxembourg (LUX)
- Universidad de Cantabria (Santander, ES)
- TU Eindhoven (NL)
- Maths for More (Barcelona, ES)
- Jihočeská Univerzita v Českých Budějovicích (CZ)
Software
