Mathematics Laboratory
An workshop on a series of intelligent educational softwares
Zhang Jingzhong (Academician of The Academy of Sciences of China)
Li Chuanzhong (Engineer)
Liang Songxin (Lecturer, Ph.D Student)
atcm99@guangztc.edu.cn
Institute of Educational Softwares Guangzhou Normal University
Guangzhou 510400, P.R.China
Abstract
For the time being, the common educational softwares are merely a storage of exercise problems. Providing only limited topics and graphs, they are lack of man-machine interactive functions. So they are very difficult to promote the interest of study for users (especially for students).
How can the skills of automatic reasoning be used to develop educational software? What would it be like for the educational software with automate reasoning?
By using the achievements gained from the field of automatic reasoning, we have developed a series of intelligent educational software tools, called Mathematics Laboratory or MathLab. MathLab covers all mathematical courses of high school, including Geometry Expert, Solid Geometry, Analytic Geometry,Plane Geometry, Trigonometric Functions, and Algebra.
The goal of MathLab is to make a powerful and convenient platform for both teaching and learning mathematics. This series of software tools is capable of solving mathematical problems provided by the user automatically. MathLab also possesses very strong man-machine interactive functions, allowing teachers to teach classes with it directly and students to learn mathematics effectively.
The graphical interface for MathLab is based on dynamical construction of diagrams which gives an intuitive way of teaching many abstract mathematics concepts. Besides automated solution of problems, MathLab can automatically generate problems for a given diagram; actually MathLab can generate all the properties of a given figure that can be deduced with a fixed set of axioms and can generate a proof for each of the properties. MathLab can also produce multiple solutions for the same problem, and measure spatial quantities.
With these features,teaching and learning mathematics are like doing an experiment.
Topical Outline of the Content
- A Summary on Educational Softwares
- Demonstration of Solid Geometry
- Demonstration of Analytic Geometry, Geometry Expert, Plane Geometry, Triangle Functions and Algebra.
© Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics, 1998. |
