Math Support: Exercise Repository and Worksheet Generator

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  • Interns - If you are interested in this project, add your name to the Interested interns section below along with a brief description of why you're interested and why you'd be a good mentor for this project, along with any specific ideas for execution you might have beyond the project description.
  • Mentors - If you are interested in this project, add your name to the Interested mentors section below along with a brief description of why you're interested and why you'd be a good mentor for this project, along with any specific ideas for execution you might have beyond the project description.
  • Others - If you are interested in this project in a role other than that of potential mentor or potential intern (example: you are an organization, a potential end-user/tester, may have helpful resources, or want to be notified if the project is chosen), add your name to the Other interested parties section below with contact information and details.
  • Everyone - Contribute to the project description on this page, or discuss this project on the associated talk page (click the "discussion" tab on top).

The deadline for editing this proposal or adding yourself to the list is 11:59pm EST (GMT-5) on August 6, 2007.

Project description

K-12 Math teachers in the US spend a significant amount of their time developing worksheets, quizzes, and homework assignments. If we can collect just a few thousand exercises in a database with a meaningful frontend, we will provide these teachers with more time to devote to the individual needs of their students.

Use Case #1

An 8th grade teacher comes to the website looking for support with Algebra. The teacher completes a form and the site dynamically generates a quiz with twenty problems and an answer sheet.

Use Case #2

A young father wants to help his son with his math homework and realizes that his son needs more practice than is available in his text. The father can come to the site and generate collections on a variety of age-appropriate math topics to use with his son.

Use Case #3

A 10th grade student preparing for the SAT wants to brush up on some Geometry topics before the test. She comes to the site and is able to generate multiple sets of practice problems.

Use Case #4

Disappointed in the sites' offerings for factoring polynomials, an 11th grade teacher in Boston spends a free period creating a quiz for his class and then adds these new exercises to the database. Later that week, a homeschool parent in Detroit uses these exercises in a lesson with her neighborhood group.

Open tasks for interns to take over

Content development

  • Talk to teachers and identify area of greatest need in the K-12 curriculum
  • Create exercises and/or word problems in a machine-readable format with rich metadata
  • Evaluate the submissions of other contributors

Site development

  • Experimenting with and recommending input standards for contributors (MathML, TI syntax, Python, Mathematica, LaTeX?)
  • Writing software to generate printer-friendly worksheets
  • Designing a relational database
  • Creating a simple user interface and a logical interaction experience

Interested interns

Ankur Verma

I am interested in site development of this project. I had previously worked on development of Automated Education System aimed at easing the task of teachers and making information more accessible to students. Students asked their queries through their mobiles and the school server replied accordingly from the database built using SQL. The results were selected based upon a a algorithm designed by me which picked the relevant results form the internet.

The Development phases of this project will include: 1. Research on best option(s) available for contribution of problems. 2. Build a simple interface for contributors to put in new problems + Adding previous contents. 2. Write a software which comes up with best matched results from the database.The results should be most appropriate and should be in a adaptive order. 3. A simple user interface which could make teacher's work more easier for making up tests. 4. And at last through testing of the system so that it should not display ambiguous results.

Being fascinated with this task, I want to work on it further. Please give your feedback at ankur[dot]verma[at]nsitonline[dot]in


Vishal Gupta

I am always keen to develop something that helps in enhancing the learning and teaching process. In fact it was the main motive of one of my projects which I did recently. I with Ankur(above) and two more members worked as a team to develop the AES(Automated Education System) to enhance the learning process and increasing parent-student-teacher interaction.

For the current project I am very much interested in designing the relational database model and the software necessary for generating the worksheets. I already have past experience of working with relational databases and want to contribute as much as I can for the development of this project. With hundreds of sites on the internet providing much material on related topics already present developing a worthy product will be the real deal and this is what I aim at.

Interested mentors

Mentor name

Kevin Driscoll, Developing Curriculum, Inc.

Other interested parties

Name

Contact information, what your interest is