Fifth Central- and Eastern European Conference
on Computer Algebra- and Dynamic Geometry Systems
in Mathematics Education

When we look at e-books, designed for mathematics education, we can distinguish two streams. On the one hand we see publishers of traditional Mathematics textbook come with digital versions of their products, mostly static pdf-documents that can be downloaded and used on different devices. Anticipating on new interactive possibilities, sometimes limited interactivity is build in. On the other hand we see innovative groups of designers that traditionally develop highly interactive tools and microworlds for mathematics education. Initially many of these tools were implemented as standalone applications. More and more these tools are integrated with written tasks, producing interactive worksheets, dynamic web pages and e-books for maths. The European ‘MC-squared’ project aims to start several so-called ‘Communities of Interest’ (CoI) in a number of European countries (Fischer, 2001) that work on digital, interactive, creative, mathematics textbooks, called cBooks. The cBooks are authored in the Digital Mathematics Environment in which authors can construct books with various interactive ‘widgets’.

In this 120 minutes workshop you will:

* Be given a short overview of the MC-squared project and the architecture of the Digital Mathematics Environment;

* Be shown two examples of cBooks on building blocks, number and fractions, as well as a myriad of widgets that could be integrated in the cBooks;

* Learn how to make your own, simple, interactive cBook;

* Be shown how these books can be used with students by sharing the book you’ve made with other workshop attendees;

Fischer, G. (2001). Communities of interest: learning through the interaction of multiple knowledge systems. In the Proceedings of the 24th IRIS Conference S. Bjornestad, R. Moe, A. Morch, A. Opdahl (Eds.) (pp. 1-14). August 2001, Ulvik, Department of Information Science, Bergen, Norway.