I am right now taking part in the ICME 11 conference, the most important international meeting of mathematics educators. ICME conferences meet every four years. This time the meeting is taking place in Monterrey, Mexico. Together with Olga Caprotti I organized a workshop entitled eLearning Mathematics and participated in the activities of the meeting in general.

Several talks about using technology in mathematics education were given. Most of them focused on the use of laboratories and Computer Algebra Systems in allowing students to experiment with mathematical concepts. The more valuable application of technology, namely automatics assessment, was discussed only in a couple of presentations. This reflects the fact that mathematics educators are not, in general, aware of what can be done with systems like MapleTA, Mathdox, STACK, Webwork, etc. Here the JEM community must do a lot of work, and keep talking about this.

Right now I am attending the final session of ICMI Study Groups.
Seymour Papert’s seminal work has been prominently discussed (http://www.papert.org/). The work of the Seventeenth ICMI Study (http://icmistudy17.didirem.math.jussieu.fr/doku.php) is most relevant to JEM – recommended reading for all JEM partners. See Olga's photo stream at flickr for some very nice photo's of the ICME meeting.

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