Objectives of the ActiveMath EU project

Mathematics is integral in many parts of life-long learning. ActiveMath-EU develops essential services, a community, and relations to networks to widely disseminate and exploit results of the highly successful FP6 project LeActiveMath. Since the analysis of LeActiveMath’ exploitation potential by Klett-Verlag has shown that an opensource distribution is a key exploitation measure, the services to be developed by ActiveMath-EU include: user mailing list, uploading facilities, integration into open-source LMS, integration into portals, manual for users, web-site with wiki, etc. Services for installation and documentation will be developed that can be refined by the spin-off e-Tell to serve schools, universities and independent users after the project has concluded.

The exploitation analysis determined additional content as a second key exploitation measure. Therefore, content is translated to more languages (Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, French), new types of exercises will be produced and content from another project (Combien, komma) will be integrated.

The European dimension will be strengthened by making ActiveMath available in more languages and for a larger geographical coverage, by disseminating to European networks, and by including representatives of new countries in the user community and in the consortium. The open-source community does not stop at country-boarders anyway. The project will disseminate to and influence decisions of the standardisation bodies IMS-QTI and W3C-maths.

Approach

A number of partners and countries outside the original consortium is involved. The project uses the community channels of several maths education networks for the open-source exploitation as well as on user group forum, workshops, etc. We cooperate with other maths projects (ReMath, WebALT, Matheführerschein, komma, Cambridge Thesaurus, mathe online). Target groups will be addressed by directly involving high schools, teacher training, several universities, users (external too). Internally, progress will be monitored continuously through qualitative feedback and numerical measures such as number of requests, web site hits, users, links, portals, participants, publications. The dissemination activities of the WHYactivemath sister project will be complementary and help to achieve an even wider European coverage.

Expected results

dissemination and exploitation to a wide audience including teachers, pre-service teachers and higher education, (life-long) learners; essential services for open-source distribution and support for ActiveMath usage; development of general services for and customization of ActiveMath; availability of ActiveMath and related content in many European languages; user community organisation and maintenance; exchange and transfer of good practices with maths networks and projects.

Coordinating organisation

University of Saarland.

The ActiveMath System

The ActiveMath system is an innovative third generation e-learning system for school and university level learning as well as for self-study that offers new ways to learn mathematics.

In ActiveMath-EU, the software is being translated to several languages and best-practice using ActiveMath-EU is advertised.

What is it?

The ActiveMath system offers new ways to learn mathematics. Imagine a book that adapts to the goals of the individual learner, to her/his competencies and to how he/she feels. A book that offers interactive tools to deepen the mathematical knowledge. A book that talks with the learner about her/his achievements and current competencies. The ActiveMath system adapts to the learner and learning context and comprises personalization, student modelling and tool-supported active and exploratory learning.

What does it offer?

The learner can

• choose among several learning scenarios
• receive learning material tailored to her/his needs and interests
• assemble individual courses her/himself
• learn interactively and receive feedback in exercises
• take the initiative in choosing content and exercises
• use interactive tools such as semantic lexicon, concept map tool, and assessment tool
• receive responses to his/her motivation
• search in a repository of interactive exercises
• input mathematical expressions easily as well as copy and paste them
• inspect the learner model and partially modify the system´s beliefs about own capabilities and preferences.

More information

Please read-more in the flyer pages or go to the description of the ActiveMath software.

Translations of LeActiveMath Content Collections

The content developed in LeActiveMath project is made of LeAM_calculus and AC_UK_calculus. These collections are being translated as part of the ActiveMath-EU project.

More information about these collections can be read on the project pages.

Below you find details per language:

• German: this is the original LeAM_calculus language. AC_UK_calculus has been translated to German.
• English: this is the original AC_UK_calculus language, LeAM_calculus has been has been translated to English by Christian Groß and Marianne Moorman and proofed by Iain Gibson

• Spanish: the University of Malaga has translated both collections to Spanish by Verónica Guzmán

• Czech: LeAM_calculus and maybe AC_UK_calculus will be translated to Czech by Charles University, Prague.

• French: a translation is being realized in ActiveMath-EU by the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris.
• Hungarian: LeAM_calculus and maybe AC_UK_calculus will be translated to Hungarian by Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

• Dutch: LeAM_calculus and maybe AC_UK_calculus will be translated to Dutch by St. Michael College, Zaandam.

• Mandarine Chinese: a part of LeAM_calculus has been translated to Mandarine by Rui Dong