1 NKBW project (Nationale Kennisbank Basisvaardigheden Wiskunde, National Knowledge Bank on Basic Skills in Mathematics)

NKBW 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.

In the mean time a follow up project has been set up and is to start in September 2008. This project will run for 2 years. Hans Cuypers (TU/e) is part of the management team of the new project.

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.

Hans Cuypers (TU/e) is a member of SIGMA

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.

In March 2008,a user test of the system has been done.

4 Wortel TU/e

Wortel TU/e is a TU/e project focused 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

In the last 6 month many new interactive exercises and mathematical contents has been added to the project. Moreover, a tool is under construction to automatically create SCORM packages for the project.

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/.

Over the last 6 month MathDox has been modified to improve performance. A automatic installer has been created and the manual has been expanded. The FormulaEditor has reached its 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.
The notion of context within MathDox is also still under development. As part of the context approach MathDox Fragments have been implemented. Fragments are small parts of a MathDox document and can be used as building blocks in order to build, dynamicly, larger MathDox documents on the fly. Some attention was also paid on scoping of variables with MathDox and its fragments.

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:
Our OpenMath based protocol SCSCP (Symbolic Computation Software Composability Protocol) has been implemented into the main systems, along with OpenMath support for various objects such as integers, matrices, polynomials, etc. Currently we are upgrading to a new version of the protocol (SCSCP 1.1) that has been developed to address problems found while using the first implementation.

In other activities, effort is being put into creating grid computing software that supports this protocol, as well as (automatic) parallelization of certain computing tasks. While SCSCP is maturing, the cooperation between the two activities intensifies.

More information on SCSCP may be found at the SCIEnce web site: http://www.symbolic-computation.org/scscp

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. The website for this project can be found at: http://www.win.tue.nl/wiskunded.
Parts of the contents developped within this project has been turned in interactive teaching material.

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.

Inter2geo is a European project, with a consortium consisting of multiple companies and universities (to be precise: Pedagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd, Université Montpellier, DFKI, Cabrilog, Universität Bayreuth, Université de Luxembourg, Universidad de Cantabria, Maths for More and Jihočeská Univerzita v Českých Budějovicích). 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 six months, a specification was made for the new metadata standard. Also, an ontology was developed for competencies and topics of high school mathematics, mainly geometry (but not exclusively), as well as an ontology of the educational pathways in Europe. A paper was written about this for the MKM 2008 conference, to take place at the end of July.

10 Conferences, talks and meetings

Hans Cuypers will present the following two papers
at EdMedia 2008 in Vienna.

MathDox, a system for interactive Mathematics
Arjeh Cohen, Hans Cuypers, Jan Willem Knopper, Mark Spanbroek, Rikko Verrijzer

Wizmo, een wiskunde repository
Hans Cuypers en Piet van der Zanden, submitted.

Portal and Repository for sharing Mathematical Learning Objects
A.H.W. (Piet) van der Zanden and Hans Cuypers

Paul Libbrecht, Cyrille Desmoulins, Christian Mercat, Colette Laborde, Michael Dietrich, and Maxim Hendriks.
wrote a paper for MKM 2008 conference, to take place at the end of July.
Titled: Cross-curriculum search for intergeo
To Appear in Proceedings of MKM 2008. Springer Verlag, July 2008.

Arjeh M. Cohen, Jan Willem Knopper, and Scott H. Murray, wrote
Automatic proof of graph nonisomorphism;
to appear in Journal of Mathematics in Computer Science (ed. M. Kerber)
Presented in Bremen CADE 2007 workshop Disproving, July 16, 2007 by Jan Willem Knopper

Dan Roozemond held talk at RWCA2008 in Levico Terme, Italy, at 17 June about
Chevalley Bases of Lie Algebras over Fields of Small Characteristic
and at the DIAMANT/EIDMA Symposium, Oegstgeest, Netherlands, at 30 May
Chevalley Bases over Fields of Small Characteristic

In the period January-June 2008, a course on dynamical systems was organized for highschool teachers. On June 23 a general meeting
on Wiskunde D (Mathematics D) for highschool teachers was held at TU/e.