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Mathematics

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Revision as of 22:49, 11 August 2008 by Ian Wild (talk | contribs)

Equation Construction and Display

Tools

There are a variety of tools that are available for the purpose of constructing equations, providing text expressions that can be converted to equations, and displaying equations.

The most common text expression syntax is LaTeX or a derivative with probably the most common form of display being a conversion of the equation to an image file. However, is demonstrated with ASCIIMathML simple text expressions can now be be converted to MathML on the fly.

Some tools for creating and displaying equations on-line that may be of interest to those teaching mathematics are:

Mathematics teachers may also be interested to follow the work of York University Maths department, who are working on some projects to augment Moodle, particularly its Quiz module for online assessment, for example by integrating a system which is able to mark algebraic and trigonometric answers to open-ended questions.

Accessibility Display Matrix

■ Feature Key appears below the matrix - please suggest additional features

Dimenion\Notation Tex/LaTex ASCIIMath MathML OpenOffice Math OMML
Ease of Use Plain text system. Knowledge of LaTeX notation required. Being a plain text system, LaTeX notation is straightforward to create and edit. Plain text system. Easy to learn. Notation simple. Being a plain text system, ASCIIMath is very easy to create and edit. XML-based. Not easy to create and edit: an editor is required.
Conversion to/from other syntax Can be converted to/from other formats.
Conversion to/from Braille LaTeX notation output directly to Braille display via screen reader (fn 2) ASCIIMath notation converted to LaTex and output to Braille display via screen reader (fn 2) Converted to Braille using screen reader (fn 3)
Transmission via TTS Notation output directly as-is via screen reader Notation output directly as-is via screen reader Converted to speech using screen reader (fn 3)

fn1. MathPlayer claims to do math-to-speech by parsing the MathML, not by parsing TeX. See http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/tech/accessibility.htm where it is stated:

All of these examples were written in Microsoft Word and MathType and exported to MathML using MathType’s “MathPage” technology. MathPage technology was added to MathType in version 5.0. No special work is needed to author the expressions to make them accessible. Any product that exports MathML will produce pages that MathPlayer can speak.

For a larger real life example, see this page. Also, MSN Encarta uses MathML on many of their web pages that contain math, so much of their Math should be accessible using MathPlayer.

fn2.


fn3. Screen readers require MathPlayer plugin installed in IE in order to make MathML accessible. Using MSAA, the screen reader will then obtain relevant text from MathPlayer which it can then TTS and Braille. Note that MathPlayer contains built-in TTS functionality (employing MS SAPI) which can be used to output the rendered notation to speech without having a screen reader installed. See [1] for further details.

Using Java for Curriculum

Java Tools for Building Applets for Interactive Demonstration

These tools can be integrated in or used with Moodle Resources

Additional Curricular Use of Applets

Applet Tools

Java Applet Collections

Mathematics Assessment

Assessment is a key driver for mathematics. There are a number of ways of getting students to answer mathematical questions through Moodle.

See also

Using Moodle forum discussions: