News from TMP - August 1995 --------------------------- Dear All, Here are some items of news for the JULY-AUGUST 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 at: . BIG CHANGES AFOOT AT T.M.P.: Our efforts in improving the TMP modules in the light of last year's evaluation are coming to fruition. We are now making a total stylistic revision to all our modules, aiming to encourage even more the use of experimental, activity-centred modes of learning. The new-style on-screen notebook, or "Laboratory Bench", is essentially blank except for a command to load the required Mathematica function package, all instructions being given on paper (and we are looking at presenting these as WWW pages too, as in the demonstrations below). The paper materials have two parts: "Instructions for Experiments" guide the on-screen activities, "Background and Follow-up Reading" provides the mathematical background. The new style modules will be tested in the Autumn Term, and we expect to make them available to all from the Project servers in December. Meanwhile you can get a taster by looking at our *new* *online* *demonstrations*: http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/DoExperimentOnline.html New modules on: Getting Started with Mathematica, Functions & Graphs, Algebra, and Laboratory Statistics will be available later this year. You can read more about the module changes at: http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/BigChangesAfoot.html INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICA SYMPOSIUM, SOUTHAMPTON: Phil Ramsden's presentation at the International Mathematica Symposium in July is now published in the conference Proceedings ("Mathematics with Vision", Computational Mechanics Publications (Southampton & Boston, U.S.A.), 1995). It is also accessible on our WWW server at: http://othello.ma.ic.ac.uk/articles/Southampton.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). It is important for us to be able to show our paymasters that we do have some "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)171 594 8503, Fax: +44 (0)171 594 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 .