A video is now available to watch on the TEL YouTube channel. ‘MiGen: Unlocking Algebra’ video, showcases our work.

We also make available a version for Macs as an application, making it easier to download and start http://code.google.com/p/migen/downloads/detail?name=eXpresser-1-10948b-mac.zip&can=2&q=

The MiGen project has officially come to an end  However, development continues. Follow our efforts to make the system more widely available on the web. Although not formally released yet, this link takes you the web-version of eXpresser with a pre-configured activity.

Comments, ideas and support are as always welcome.

The main change is an attempt to reduce the space occupied by the General Model by including it in the Activity Document. In specific tasks this means that it can be included above or below the task presentation. In all other cases, users can construct their own Activity Documents.

This change also affects the way the students’ work area can be presented. It now includes the “Play Button” as well and therefore students can check the generality of their models directly in their working area. Other implications of this change include:

• the General Model can be resized and/or zoomed accordingly
• values of unlocked numbers are shown in the General Model as soon as they are unlocked (the window displays unnamed unlocked numbers and named unlocked numbers separately)
• the Model Rule appears in an equation in the General Model and named unlocked numbers appear simply as their names.

Because of these significant pages we wrote more detailed descriptions in the Using MiGen pages (note also a new video from the MiGen team “Learn eXpresser in less than 5 minutes“ that introduces eXpresser and incorporates the changes to the ‘General Model’ mentioned above).

You feedback and ideas for future versions are welcome.

Other changes include the following:

• users can change tasks without closing eXpresser
• documents/pages can also be saved and loaded without closing eXpresser

There are also a lot of change in the teacher tools

• classroom dynamics tool, grouping tool, student tracker, goal achievement

These were demonstrated at a PGCE session at the Institute of Education.

Students worked for 4 days with several activities with and without eXpresser.

This is a milestone release following the previous one in October. It includes several invisible bug fixes and other changes that improve eXpresser’s performance.

Visual changes include

• additional activities when eXpresser starts (e.g. “My Building Block” where students are encouraged to build their own building blocks)
• intelligent support for several linear tasks, the microworld affordances and the reflective questions
• a quadratic task, to which we refer as “Grid”
• teacher tools (particularly the grouping tool)
• collaboration documents that get constructed when students login together
• explicit “Finished” button that allows finishing an activity and closing eXpresser

There are also a lot of User Interface improvement on the teacher tools and the configuration options. Have a look at the code changes in the repository for more details.

The paper “Adaptive Modelling of Users’ Strategies in Exploratory Learning Using Case-Based Reasoning” by M. Cocea, S. Gutierrez-Santos and G.D. Magoulas, which describes work done in the context of the MiGen project, won the best PhD student paper award at the 14th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES 2010), Cardiff, Wales, UK, 8-10 September 2010.

CERME Distinguished Lecturer Series

As part of the Centre for Research in Mathematics and Science Education’s Distinguished Lecturer Series,  Richard Noss and Celia Hoyles represented the MiGen team and presented on ‘Mathematics at Work: A Need for New Mathematical Literacies” at the University of San Diego.

Their presentation can be downloaded:  Eirini Geraniou & Helen Humble workshop-19-10-2010

The presentation in pdf version can be downloaded from here: ectel10_pres

Sergio Gutiérrez-Santos and Manolis Mavrikis were co-organisers of the Intelligent Support for Exploratory Environments (ISEE’10) workshop.  For more information and to join the community around this field see http://link.lkl.ac.uk/isee

• Pre-defined activities for learning eXpresser progressively (feel free to contact us for activity manuals lesson plans). If you want to play with eXpresser without a certain activity choose the Default one from the drop down menu.
• A full-fledged activitity (called TrainTrack) that asks for students to make a model, reflect on their goals, and share their model and rules with other students. The system also demonstrates the design of intelligent support that can be provided for these activities

Since summer we have been working a lot on the internal architecture of the system, so not a lot of visible changes in eXpresser apart from:

• The design of the negative tiles has now changed to Removable Patterns. All patterns can now be either added or removed to the canvas thus allowing the creation of complex patterns with overlaps
• Several bugs were fixed. In particular patterns of patterns now behave more consistently both in “My Model” and the “General Model”
• As always some bugs were fixed – but feel free to report anything you find

This release also comes with a server and teacher tools but these are still experimental. Feel free to contact us for more info.

From the pre-xmas release it incorporates:

• the new property list that contains two tabs that separate pattern creation and building block translation
• and additional integrated feedback for the correctness of local and global rules

Since the new year we have been working a lot on the internal architecture of the system, so not a lot of visible changes apart from:

• Improved activity documents with additional questions that help students reflect on their work
• The Train Track  activity has been changed to allow students to show the structure of the pattern using different colours. You will notice the difference in  World Colouring Rule where it expects a rule for the total number of tiles used in the canvas and not just for one colour. This is also the reason that the initial pattern in the Activity Document is shown in grey.
• As always some bugs were fixed – but feel free to report anything you find

This version demonstrates an attempt to take into account some feedback from the last practioner’s meeting (see the December newsletter). In particular apart from several bug fixes:

1. we tried to reduce the complexity of the property list. Now, the property list contains 2 tabs. One is for the number of repetitions and the number of coloured tiles you need and the other one is for the translations, across and down.
2. change #1 enabled us to re-order the properties when making a pattern (i.e., the pattern maker window) back to how they were originally conceptualised.  Now the number of repeats of the building block is last. This draws students’ attention first to the translations and the structure of the pattern (we found that it was more natural to decide first the placement of the building block rather than the number it repeats).
3. another feature-in-progress is the ability of the microworld to provide integrated feedback for the correctness of the rules (both for local patterns and for the whole world). At the moment, when the rule is wrong, its frame is painted red, otherwise it is painted green.

We are working to improve these features, so your feedback would be valuable.

By the way – in case you didn’t notice we also changed a bit the website.

In the spirit of the days and to reflect the scenery around LKL we ‘ve also enabled the ‘snow falling on the blog’ wordpress feature. It will be there only until January 4th ! Meanwhile enjoy the festive period and have a  happy new year… and if you are interested  for a quick challenge outside expresser have a look at the NCETM Season’s Greetings.