Math wikis?

September 5, 2007 9 Comments

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I received this recently:

Dr. McLeod, I am a math teacher in [school district] and have attended two of your presentations (one last school year). I am wondering if there is a place where I could create wikis for my classes that allow students to enter math equations, use correct geometric notation, etc. (similar to MathType). It doesn’t seem like this is an option?? Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Got any suggestions for him?

 

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9 Responses to “Math wikis?”

  1. Robert Talbert Reply September 5, 2007 at 5:04 am

    Wikispaces (www.wikispaces.com) lets you enter in LaTeX code directly into a wiki article, and it compiles it for you. Here’s the article that explains it:

    http://blog.wikispaces.com/2007/05/math-in-wikispaces.html

    As far as I know, this is the only wiki platform with built-in math typesetting support. Students will have to learn a little LateX syntax, but that’s not as hard as it appears.

  2. Jackie Reply September 5, 2007 at 5:43 am

    Echoing Robert’s comment above: LaTex. One option available is “Textify” http://www.texify.com/
    This way students don’t have to download LaTex.

  3. Scott McLeod Reply September 5, 2007 at 9:17 am

    This is why I love the Web. Where else can I ask a question of the entire world and get a quick response? Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge!

  4. Jack Phelps Reply September 5, 2007 at 10:00 am

    Hi Scott~

    Another solution is the ASCIIMathML text-to-math javascript converter built by professor Peter Jipsen at Chapman University (http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html). This converts LaTeX and other math notations on the web and uses just javascript to overwrite the text into MathML, a markup language supported by firefox (and IE with a plugin).

    The LaTeX in Wikispaces is perfectly good, and it even generates an image that you can take and use elsewhere if you want. But a teacher wants to have a page or allow students to generate content that’s a little more flexible and portable and a little less proprietary, Prof Jipsen’s code is the best. When I spoke with him he even agreed to change the license to LGPL from GPL, so it can be linked to in commercial products, which is a great way to spread math on the web. We’re using it and people who see how it works in our product are consistently thrilled.

    -Jack

  5. Susan Brooks-Young Reply September 5, 2007 at 3:39 pm

    Hi Scott,

    If you haven’t gotten enough ideas, you might also suggest that this teacher check with Darren Kuropatwa. His AP math students have several wikis going each year. Here’s a URL to one of his blogs: http://adifference.blogspot.com/.

    Susan

  6. Paul Topping Reply September 5, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    MathType 6.0 which has just been released can copy equations to/from Wikipedia and other wikis based on MediaWiki. It also can generate TeX/LaTeX code that can work on the blogs and wikis mentioned in other comments here. This is good if you don’t already know TeX. However, if you do know Tex, MathType 6.0 also allows you to define equations by typing TeX code and lets you paste them into web pages, word processing documents, presentations, etc. We will be addressing greater compatibility with blogs, wikis, instant messaging in future releases.

    Paul Topping
    Design Science
    http://www.dessci.com

  7. Mark Wagner Reply September 5, 2007 at 11:48 pm

    Wow. I clicked through to leave a link the wikispaces LaTeX feature, but was (pleasantly) amazed to find I was more than 12 hours too late… amazed enough to comment on it. In any case, I hope this response from the community can help your friend.

  8. Arnold Kriegbaum Reply September 6, 2007 at 7:40 am

    Wikispaces has math function abilities. And now widget support.

    What a Country!

  9. suma valluru Reply September 19, 2007 at 3:47 am

    Hi, even i have the suggestion of textify.com which can be used without La Tex..

    cheers,
    suma valluru
    —————————————–
    https://www.esumz.com

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