Group items tagged

From the abstract: "is research develops around a technological intervention intended to transform a peer produced reference resource into a peer produced learning environment. An early Web 2.0 community for mathematics, PlanetMath.org, will henceforth become a mathematical practicum, and a laboratory for learning science."

Regarding researchers' boycotting Elsevier journals, a mathematician comments on the publisher's high priced mathematics titles as well as apparent lack of peer review.

From the abstract (full text requires subscription or purchase): "Though cooperative learning has been a topic of considerable interest in educational research, there has been little study specific to learning in the mathematics content area of geometry. This paper seeks to address that gap through a design experiment featuring a novel small-group computing environment for supporting student learning about quadrilaterals. In this design, each student controls a unique point in a shared geometric space, and those points are linked such that a group of four students collectively forms a quadrilateral. We first present results from pre- and post-measures to show how the students learned from the activities and developed in terms of geometric reasoning. We then present three episodes, elaborated with the notion of appropriation, to explain how students took up ways of using the technological tools and of talking about geometric concepts from one another in the interactive environment. Our study found that students achieved learning gains in this novel environment, that the environment provided rich opportunities for peer interaction around geometric objects, and that student learning opportunities and interactions were characterized by processes of appropriating ways of talking about and using software features."

A workshop scheduled in Berkeley, California, Feburary14-16, 2011. "The workshop will discuss what is important and unique to the publishing of mathematical research articles and how we can best ensure that publishing practices support peer reviewed research in the long term. Much of the current discussion is taking place between funders and publishers, including learned societies, but not directly with mathematicians. A second goal is to see if we can find a consensus of opinion on what is important about journal publishing to mathematicians, that is, where the balance lies between the desire for profits from publishing and the broader dissemination of research."