1
NKBW project (Nationale Kennisbank Basisvaardigheden Wiskunde, National Knowledge Bank on Basic Skills in Mathematics) is a project initiated by NAP (Nationaal ActiePlan e-learning). The NKBW is a joint project with 13 Dutch higher education institutes (including JEM partner UvA). The website of this project is http://www.nkbw.nl. The project has ended December 2007.
The result is the WIZMO internet portal (http://www.wizmo.nl) that facilitates the disclosure of all e-learning material contributed by the project partners. Learning objects from large projects, like WortelTUe, MathMatch, WisWeb are submitted to a repository, which then can be accessed through WIZMO.The portal is intenteded to be used by students as well as teachers.

2
SIGMA (Special Interest Group Mathematics Activities).

SIGMA is an initiative of the SURF foundation (http://www.surf.nl), and aims at facilitating continuous learning paths in education in mathematics between secondary education and higher education. In this way SIGMA intends to attack the problems regarding the transition 'from pupil to student' for mathematics. SIGMA is the platform for the exchange of knowledge, experiences and helps in addressing the problems of
prerequisite mathematics. The website of this project is http://e-learning.surf.nl/sigma. SIGMA concentrates on four main topics: content and education, assessment and testing, exchange and
standardization, and the SIGMA award for best teacher and practice in education. SIGMA is a community rather than a single project. The community accommodates many projects, programs and working groups. Current projects are MathMatch, NKBW and Webspijkeren. Current workgroups are engaged in synchronization of assessments, standardization of tests, the initiation of new NAP projects, and the granting of the SIGMA award.

3
Intelligent Feedback

Intelligent Feedback is a Surf-funded research project of the Dutch Open University, the Technical University Delft and the Technical University of Eindhoven (see http://ideas.cs.uu.nl/wiki/index.php/IDEAS:IntelligentFeedback). Within the project we develop a prototype of an intelligent feedback component that automatically provides feedback on student answers to mathematical questions in the domain of linear algebra. The feedback component is based upon rewrite technology from computer science. A user interface will be provided by the MathDox system as developed by the TU/e.

4
Wortel TU/e

Wortel TU/e is a TU/e project focusing on:
- Improving the transition of students from highschool(VWO) to the TU/e with respect to their knowledge of mathematics
- Offering mathematical material suitable for selfstudy
- Solving/improving problems with regard to lack of prerequisites Wortel TU/e contains
- study material for high school mathematics calculus and linear algebra
- interactive examples and digital examination possibilities.
Websites related to Wortel TU/e are:
http://wortel.tue.nl
http://wortel.tue.nl/html
http://dam02.win.tue.nl/moodle

In the past six months a lot of texts have been made in a restricted TeX format. It is possible to convert this format into MathDox, an XML format for mathematics, and publish the resulting documents on the web or, using the custom latex style file, generate output in PDF format for printing.

5 Mathadore

Mathadore is new, web based, and highly interactive course material for high school mathematics in the Netherlands. Mathadore is still under development, but parts can be found at http://www.mathadore.nl
Mathadore makes use of the MathDox software as developed by the TU/e. Mathadore is a project of a consortium consisting of the foundation Math4All, Pragma ADE, an small company specialized in publishing on demand, and the Discrete Algebra and Geometry group of the TU Eindhoven.

6 MathDox

The MathDox project has developed an XML format for interactive mathematical documents. These MathDox documents can be transformed to interactive mathematical web pages using the MathDox Player. Interactive
mathematical documents can be used for demonstrations of algorithms, mathematics skill testing exercises or explaining new concepts with dynamic, on-screen, calculations. MathDox is being used in other projects
as well, namely: Wortel TU/e and Mathadore. For more information see: http://www.mathdox.org/. Recently MathDox has been modified to improve performance. The FormulaEditor has nearly reached completion and has been added to MathDox. With the FormulaEditor, MathDox now has it's own mathematical editor which does not suffer from the drawbacks of applets. Work also started to enrich the MathDox format with a notion of context in order to make it capable to better adjust to different (kind of) users.

7 SCIEnce Symbolic Computation Infrastructure for Europe

The SCIEnce project brings together the developers of four powerful symbolic computation software packages and a major symbolic computation research institute supported by research groups expert in essential
underpinning technologies, to unite the European community of researchers in, and users of, symbolic computation. The project will promote the development of new software made more efficient by sharing components and expertise, more interoperable in the modern Web services environment and ready for the coming environment of Grid computing. The project is an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative, funded by the European Commission under the Research Infrastructures Action of Framework 6. It began on 1 April 2006 and runs for 5 years.
The partners in the project are:
* The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra (St
Andrews, Scotland), coordinating
* RISC-Linz, Austria
* University Kassel, Germany
* The KANT group at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany
* The Discrete Algebra and Geometry group at the Technical University of
Eindhoven, Netherlands
* Institute e-Austria Timisoara, Romania
* Maplesoft, Inc, Waterloo, Canada
* The Dependable Systems Research Group at Herriot-Watt University, Scotland
Recent developments:
We are working on an OpenMath based protocol (called SCSCP) for the different Computer Algebra Systems to communicate by. For this, major progress is being made on the OpenMath support in the CASes. On the other
hand, great amounts of effort are being put into creating grid computing software that supports this protocol as well as (automatic) parallelization of certain computing tasks.

8 Wiskunde D

A mathematics curriculum change in the Netherlands has opened up the possibility for active involvement of universities. Our group is actively involved in one of the new highschool subjects: Wiskunde D (Mathematics D), intended for science oriented students. Our involvement consists basically of producing material, online and on paper, regular meetings with and active collaboration with highschool teachers (including giving guest lessons on schools and receiving groups of pupils at our university), reporting in journals for mathematics highschool teachers, and giving courses for highschool teachers in order to prepare them mathematically on their tasks. Fall 2007 a course on Complex Numbers and a meeting on Probability for highschool teachers where organized. The website for this project can be found at: http://www.win.tue.nl/wiskunded.

9 Inter2geo is a European project, with a consortium consisting of multiple companies and universities. The goal is to develop a platform on the web where mathematics teachers throughout Europe (and elsewhere) can go to find, edit and even add dynamic geometry resources, to be used as classroom material. Project site: http://inter2geo.eu/ The past three months were the initial phase of the project, which started on the 1st of October. Since then, the TU/e has worked on developing a metadata standard for geometry resources. This will be used with the new file format, which will be developed the coming year.

10 Conferences, talks and meetings

August
Dan Roozemond attended a SCIEnce workshop and ISSAC 2007 at Waterloo, Canada
An article and a talk by Hans Sterk and Rikko Verrijzer about Wortel TU/e
has been committed to the JEM sponsored SCOOP Workshop at Bremen, Germany.

September
The article 'Wiskunde D: het steunpunt aan de TU/e' written by Hans Sterk
was published in 'Nieuwe Wiskrant'

October
Jan Willem Knopper and Mark Spanbroek held a talk about the new
formulaeditor at Milton Keynes, England
Presentations of Wortel TU/e and Wiskunde D where held for an audience of
highschool directors at the 'Rectorendag' at the TU/e, Eindhoven
Hans Cuypers and Maxim Hendriks went to Schwabisch Gmund, Germany for the
kick-off meeting for the Inter2Geo project.
(Wiskunde D) course on Complex Numbers and a meeting on Probability for
highschool teachers was organized.

November
Wortel TU/e, a presentation of Wortel TU/e for an audience of teachers,
Breda

December
Dan Roozemond gave a talk 'Lie Algebras having Extremal Elements' at the
Nikolaus 2007 meeting.
The article 'Steunpunt TU/e: wiskunde in wetenschap' written by Hans Sterk
and Ernst Lambeck was published in 'Euclides'