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Welcome! February at the Forum
Posted:
Feb 8, 1993 3:52 PM
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Welcome to The Geometry Forum!
Our goal is to build an electronic community composed of high school and
college teachers and students, research geometers, researchers in
geometry education, developers of software and other educational
materials, appliers of geometry, and everyone else interested in the
subject. Various aspects of the world of geometry make this a real
possibility and a goal with important educational consequences.
We're now feeding quite a few sites (listed at the end) and some of them
are feeding other sites .... We welcome the batch of new readers who
have arrived, but we note with concern that some of our sites may expire
articles as rapidly as every three days, which can give a fledgling
bulletin board a rather denuded appearance. Please drop us a note if you
read us on a feed and find almost nothing there; at the moment we're not
sure how serious the problem is.
Do post your questions, comments, suggestions! We've heard from
personal email that there are a lot of folks reading but not writing, and
while we have not the slightest doubt that we'll ultimately fly, we need
your immediate help in getting off the ground.
Although we may later become a regular Usenet newsgroup, while we get
the kinks out and the structure coalesces, we will continue to exist as a
separate newsgroup hierarchy on our own news server, with feeds to a
number of institutions and educational networks. We can also appear as a
mailing list to those who have only email capabilities or prefer this
form of interaction.
We realize the importance of having school teachers participating on the
Forum from the outset, and our sponsor, the National Science Foundation,
has given us some funds to work with local Philadelphia schools.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is not among the leading states in bringing
telecommunications technology to the schools, and we have been forced to
rely on the kindness of local institutions of higher learning for teacher
accounts. This has been more of a struggle than we anticipated, although
we are making progress. We have yet to find a magic formula which
unlocks the hearts of directors of computer centers or those to whom they
report. Suggestions would be most welcome, since this problem is by no
means unique to Philadelphia.
For the time being we have modest funds which we could use to help some
worthy teachers get on the Internet, and we'd like suggestions of
particularly meritorious individual teachers of geometry.
We already have hints of the possible force of interactions possible
when teachers, mathematics educators, and mathematicians talk together.
However, we lack the critical mass to have many examples of teachers
supporting teachers, an activity we expect to be important. And other
enticing possibilities go dangling:
--a science museum curator posed a question on mazes, and it took a
long time for anyone to respond;
--a community college teacher reports that her institution is now
thinking of adding geometry to their curriculum and wishes
suggestions; no response to date.
We hope to soon begin working with interested teachers to develop
classroom geometry projects which involve the Internet in general and the
Geometry Forum in particular. We're looking for teachers with ideas, and
we have some modest funds available. Interested?
As a necessary aid to community building, we also have a software
development component to our project. Our goal is to construct
newsreading software which is especially simple and easy to use and, to
meet the special needs of our particular clientele, has the capacity to
send and interpret symbols and diagrams. Within a month we hope to post
our plans on the Forum for public input.
Gene Klotz
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Accessing The Geometry Forum:
It is especially convenient if your site is willing to carry our feed as
part of its regular news, since you can then read us as you would a
normal Usenet newsgroup. Drop a line to our network guru,
phil@forum.swarthmore.edu.
Otherwise we're accessible by pointing your newsreader to
forum.swarthmore.edu instead of your local news server. Further details
about access are available by writing annie@forum.swarthmore.edu, or by
calling 1-800-756-7823.
An email alternative which we're currently debugging: If you're not set
up for newsgroups or prefer mailing lists, we'll send you all new
postings of the Forum (sub)groups you're interested in as email and you
can respond in kind. To try out this possibility, mail
majordomo@forum.swarthmore.edu with a message body of 'help'. No
subject line.
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We're currently feeding the following sites. Further suggestions
welcome.
City University of New York, NorthWest Net, North Dakota's K-12 Telcom
Network, University of Minnesota, The World (Public Access Unix in
Boston), Educational Computing Network (University Park, IL), St. Olaf
College, Smith College, University of Virginia, Texas Education Network,
University of Kentucky, a2i communications (Public Access Unix in
northern CA), The IDS World Network (Public Access Unix in Rhode Island),
Grebyn Corporation (P.A. Unix in DC area), uunet, public access unix in
Australia, public access unix in North Carolina, Colorado SuperNet, CR
Laboratories Dialup Internet Access (northern California), The Portal
System, northern California, MSen (public access in southeast Michigan),
CerfNet (southern California).
Let us know if you're reading us on another site. It's hard to keep
track, since many places will feed us to other sites.
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