News from TMP - 26 November 1994
--------------------------------

Dear All, 

Here are some items of news for the NOVEMBER period. This mailing list
has been compiled from people making direct enquiries to TMP, and from
email addresses left in the FTP logfile; if you don't wish to receive
any further mailings, please let me know [p.kent@ic.ac.uk]. Previous
newletters are stored on our server in directory project/Docs/newsletters.


IMPRESSIONS OF OUR TRIALS:

The first and major phase of our 94/5 trials is now complete. It has
confirmed once again that there is no substitute for trying out
courseware in the context where it is supposed to be used. The trials
have given us a lot of fresh ideas about what we're doing, and these
will be fed back into the development process. 

Overall, it's been a success - we feel that our pedagogical philosophy
has proved itself "in the field".

We are now working on a proper formative evaluation of the data gathered
during the trials. The data consists of computer-recorded logs of student
sessions, detailed observations of students at work, and student interviews.
The evaluation is being supervised by a colleague from the University of
London Institute of Education.


MORE ON DIALOG BOXES:
I promised in the last Newsletter to produce executable programs for
our MathLink-ed dialog box for Unix machines other than SG. This has
turned out to be quite problematic because of bugs in the X11
software, but I'm working on it.


MORE ON MATHREADER FOR MACINTOSH:
I reported in the last Newsletter that the v2.2 MathReader for
Macintosh doesn't print our Study Guides. I checked this with Wolfram
Research. In fact, v2.2 had a major (undocumented) change from v2.1 in
that the internal Mathematica PostScript to Adobe PostScript converter
was removed. Hence v2.2 cannot print graphics cells which are in
PostScript format, and that's why the Study Guides won't print.


GETTING INTERACTIVE ON THE WEB:
Our WWW server has proved invaluable as a provider of information, and for
dissemination of materials. In the coming months we will be experimenting
with getting Mathematica *interactive* on the Web. The first page, not
very exciting, can be found at URL:

 http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/View-TMP-Notebooks.html

This page discusses launching Notebooks automatically from a WWW browser.  
Watch this space for further developments. Also check out Steve Hunt's 
very interesting work in this line on the "Mathematica World" WWW server 
at URL:
 
 http://www.vut.edu.au/MW/

and Terry Robb's pages, including the Notebook-to-HTML converter, at:

 http://www.maths.monash.edu.au/people/tdr/welcome.html



FEEDBACK:
We appreciate very much all comments and suggestions about our
materials, be they good or bad, superficial or profound. If you do
download and look at our stuff, please spend a few minutes collecting
your thoughts, pressing computer keys, and sending the result to us
(tranmath-proj@ic.ac.uk). As a short-term project looking to renew its
funding next year, we need to know if we have any "customers" out
there.


OUR ADDRESSES
-------------
Phillip Kent, Phil Ramsden and John Wood,
Transitional Mathematics Project,
Mathematics Department,
Imperial College,
London SW7 2BZ.

Tel: +44 (0)71 594 8503, Fax: +44 (0)71 594 8517.
E-mail: tranmath-proj@ic.ac.uk .

Gopher and FTP to: othello.ma.ic.ac.uk (155.198.192.26).

World-Wide-Web at URL http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/ .

Please send *technical* questions about WWW/gopher/ftp and 
the TMP software direct to p.kent@ic.ac.uk .