M@th Desktop and LTM

User Interface and Learning Resources for High School Students

Phil Ramsden*, Reinhard Simonovits**, Bernd Thaller**

*Imperial College London, UK
**Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Austria

M@th Desktop

Bank of mathematical e-learning resources based on Mathematica

Developed at University of Graz by Reinhard Simonovits

Runs on Mathematica 4 and above

Aimed at high-school students in the final two years or so

Software resources and tutorial content

Suitable for "blended learning" approach

LTM Project

EU-funded project over three years

Academics and teachers from: Austria, Czech Republic, Germany,  France, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom

Has developed multilingual modules: Functions and Graphs and Linear Algebra

Freely available across Europe

Background

High school mathematics/school-university transition problematic throughout Europe

(Pisa study, Smith report)

e-learning identified as part of the possible solution

M@th Desktop and Mathematica

M@th Desktop's resources consist of Mathematica...

... menus and menu items

... notebooks

... packages

... help pages

... palettes

Mathematica user experience somewhat altered

Aim: preserve Mathematica's power, flexibility and customisability, while...

... minimising necessity for initial training in its use

Evaluation

Teacher-led exposition and project reporting session observed

Students report satisfaction

Attention levels high

Variety of activities

Multiple representations

Homepage and contacts

http://ltm.uni-graz.at

bernd.thaller@uni-graz.at (project leader)

reinhard.simonovits@uni-graz.at (main developer)

p.ramsden@imperial.ac.uk (principal author/presenter)