No doubt there are ongoing efforts of many to bring technology into Mathematics Education. In here, we begin a survey of these efforts and tools that further the experiences of learners and teachers. We will use some existing developments/projects to begin our discussion (e.g., an AOLA blog will be facilitate collaborative sharing).

The opinions expressed next are solely the author from the perspective of AOLA. The interpretation of the importance and relevancy of the sites rest squarely on the readers.

• First introduction to activityML - the language of AOLA [Chu, 2007]
• An Introduction to Technology in Mathematics Education [Chu, 2005]
• A View on Online Learning - an article published in Communications of ACM, October 2005 [A summary].
  

Operating Environment for AOLA Framework

The environment conducive to share experiences in mathematics learning and teaching is what we have called an ePlatform where participants interact any to any as defined by the need at the time. As it was proposed in ATCM 2003, Figure 1 shows an ePlatform with 'mathematical services' enabled. Briefly, based on Web Services, mathematical services are distributed applications that can be discovered via a third-party directory services (using for example UDDI). Once discovered and found appropriate, the client (the party that is requesting the service - in this case, most likely be an Dynamic Mathematics Object in an Activity in the AOLA ePlatform) will 'connect' (bind) to the particular service and expected result will be obtained as specified. This use of new Web technology for mathematics was studied in a research project (2001-2003) in the Johannes Kepler University. The project, funded by Austrian Science Foundation, was titled 'A Framework for Brokering Distributed Mathematical Services.'  Mathematical services were also discussed in ATCM 2003.


Figure 1. An Operating Environment for AOLA Framework.

Technology for the AOLA Community ePlatform

Six key technology components are identified to enable AOLA in the ePlatform. They are Exchanging, Processing (computational), Rendering, Creating, Manipulating, and Managing (See Figure 2).

Figure 2. Core Functions of the AOLA ePlatform.

We will discuss each of the core functions next.