Welcome

Welcome to MathTech.org! We made this site to keep you updated on all the ongoing developments in technology that support mathematics education and communication.

In this initial post I will share some of our goals.

The virtues of sharing

You know when you go to a conference and see a cool talk about something someone is doing in the classroom that you can’t wait to try yourself? This site should be like that! We will focus on ways technology can be used or invented to improve the learning opportunities for our students, or our professional productivity in and out of the classroom.

The more time I spend with folks in the mathematics community, especially those who value teaching, the more I am awestruck by the creativity and generosity of my colleagues. So many of us spend our time thinking about how we can do better for our students, and perhaps because we are so drawn to teaching, we want to share our insights with each other. This can be as small as an idea for how to improve attendance, to as large as a groundbreaking document authoring system like PreTeXt (now well into its second decade of intensive development). Some of us have written free textbooks, saving our students hundreds of dollars each year, and with the support of others in the community, extending these savings to students across the globe.

For all the people I have met over the years, I know there are way more that I have no idea about the great work they are doing. We can all do a better job of advertising our contributions we are so willing to freely share. My hope is that this site can serve as a mechanism for highlighting projects and ideas from those in the intersection of mathematics, education, and technology.

Building community

How can we work together to strengthen and expand the informal and adhoc communities that have sprung up around various open source tools, such as PreTeXt, WeBWork, DoeNet, and Runestone? This is hard. Not only are we all busy, but speaking only for myself (and the cliche of mathematicians), talking to people is anxiety inducing. To be clear, I have never felt anything besides complete acceptance from everyone I’ve met doing this work, and yet, Impostor Syndrome persists. This is not to complain, but hopefully to encourage those who might similarly feel intimidated or like an outsider to jump into the mix anyway. But how?

• Online chat communities. Come hang out on the PROSE Consortium Discord server. Say hi, ask some questions, tell us about yourself. There is also a Code4Math zulip chat for those more interested in technology for math research. There is lots of overlap in memberships here.
• Follow us on BlueSky and join in on the conversation.
• Hang out on zoom for one of our weekly zoom dropin office hours. You can find the link and schedule on the PROSE website.
• Comment on posts here, or submit your own post. Update: Comments are now enabled!

I’m sure there are more opportunities. Share some with us and I’ll update the list above.

PROSE continues

Wait, PROSE Consortium?

The PROSE Consortium was founded through an NSF grant to bring together the ecosystem of various open-source products and communities serving STEM education research and practice in North America, joined by their common mission: to equip STEM teachers with open-source content, tools and strategies that provide engaging, accessible, and effective learning experiences for their students.

Many of the activities of PROSE continue even after the grant has ended. MathTech.org wouldn’t exist without PROSE: it was founded by several PROSE participants to continue our advocacy for open-source technologies related to mathematics (broadly construed to include statistics, computer science, and mathematics education).

For us, the promise of PROSE is based both in its core open-source technologies and the community of people who use and improve them. Open Educational Resources (OER) authored in PreTeXt can be published in Runestone to create interactive textbooks. These textbooks can include assessments in WeBWorK to provide students with immediate feedback on their work. The Doenet platform can be used to create interactive activities that can be embedded in Runestone textbooks as well. These technologies are all open-source and can be freely used and modified by anyone.

So while the Consortium is currently on hiatus, its projects and people will continue. So once again: please connect with us!