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Mathematics

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Revision as of 23:09, 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
Conversion to Braille Output directly to Braille display via screen reader (fn 2) ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details. Converted to suitable textual format and Brailled using screen reader (fn 3)
Transmission via TTS Output directly as-is via screen reader (fn 2) ASCIIMath notation is converted to MathML or LaTeX. Please refer to those formats for details. Converted to suitable textual format and spoken using screen reader (fn 3). Note that MathPlayer add-on for IE has TTS functionality built-in.

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. The alt attribute of the rendered graphic is spoken and/or Braillled. As LaTeX is a plain text notation, the notation can be spoken and Brailled by the screen reader directly. This does, of course, assume an understanding of LaTeX notation on the part of the screen reader user.

fn3. In the case of Internet Explorer, screen readers require MathPlayer plugin installed to render MathML. Using MSAA, the screen reader will then obtain a textual version of the math notation 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 to employ a screen reader. See [1] for further details. At time of writing, screen reader support for Firefox is rather more limited (for other browsers even more so).

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: