“KWARC was!”

See MathUI paper. Annotea-Extension for Proof Documents.

See MathUI submission

At CICM 2008 (Workshop DML), Stephen Watt presented his work on analyzing the frequency of symbols, that would be an interesting infrastructure for further cop-based analysis.
See Michael’s blog and the DML Proceedings.

Another talk (Workshop MathUI) was on his handwriting recognition of mathematical notations: Presenting his Representation Approach. See paper

The challenge is that there is no fixed dictionary. But maybe CoPs provide some restrictions of potential parsing results? Or is frequency a better approach?

Marc Wagner implemented a plugin for TeXmacs which tracks a user writing and modifying a document. This was done to gain intuitions for extending is Plato editor (identifying the linguistic phenomena). And interesting aspect are that the process of writing of notations is also a practice, not just the selection of a notation. Another aspect is the level of formality users choose to solve their tasks. An analysis of the solutions might be an interesting case study for CoPs.

• Most modification where due to notations errors (so automatic verification would be very helpful).
• Sentences fragments where classified (linguistic ontology to deal with linguistic proofs)
• Pointed out practice for “concluding step”.
• Pointed out practice for “justifying” steps. (partly very hard to parse automatically: specific science or natural language)

Plan for the future: Additional components for the “ideal mathematical assistance system”. Among others

• Linguistic Ontology for concepts, types, theory structures.
• Dynamic Adaptation of Notations (Change Management).
• Context Memory???.

See paper at MathUI 2008

While browsing Julika Mimke’s webpage, I also read about the “ENGINe” project and I remembered that Isabell Schaffer, who also attended the SCOOP workshop in August, had already told me about that project and I wanted to get back with her about it.

According to Isabell Schaffer, ENGINe aims at developing a tool, which supports the communication and collaborations of creators of eLearning content. The project is an extension of the “Physik multimedial” (pmm) project, which created a learning platform for physics.

pmm provides a course and assignment management system, a media base, the “Linklistendatenbank (LiLi)”, self-learning units and information on didactics in physics. The system is used by university as well as highschool students and teachers. The Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg (ISN) provided the server, developed LiLi and the self-learning units. The ENGINe project addresses the support, maintenance, and extension of pmm, which has already been used by the University of Oldenburg, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Rostock, Greifswald, and the FHOOW Emden as well as some highschools.

While browsing the JEM network, I found an announcement of the JEM Seminar “Community Interaction and Gain using mathematical eLearning material”. The workshop aims at gathering developers throughout JEM to guide through Web2.0 tools and services, which support the interaction between students, eLearning tool creators, as well as teaching staff.

panta rhei facilitates the collaboration and interaction between professor, TAs, and students; while at the same time presenting semantically enriched content and supporting annotation as well as rating of content. In consequence, this workshop will be a great opportunity to gain an overview on other implementation as well as feedback on the system.

I went to the organizer’s web page (Julika Mimkes), who is the project manager of the Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg GmbH . In particular, her work in the project “physik multimedia” has raised my interest, since it addresses the teaching of physics to biologist and therefore overlaps with my personal research goal:

I am analyzing mathematical practice. In particular, I am interested in how different research areas do and use mathematics. Based on that, I am hoping to develop a method (and improve my system) in order to allow new students (with different background, from different countries) to adopt to the math in a specific lecture. I am therefore extremely keen on learning more about the results of the “physics multimedia” project and will try to get in contact with Julika Mimkes, if possible, inviting her to one of our KWARC meetings.