WME is an ICM research project (2004--2010) that aimed to produce a modern mathematics education system on the Web for
contemporary teachers and students.
WME connects mathematics education content
by expert groups (in higher education)
to K-12 teachers and students.
WME delivers classroom ready, dynamic, and
hands-on lessons and modules to teachers
and students.
WME provides assessment services, teacher guides, education research materials to teachers.
The approach is to provide each participating school
with a website that is comprehensive, well-organized, dynamic, interactive,
hands-on and ready to use by teachers for mathematics teaching in
the classroom.
The WME system conforms to open standards,
works with regular browsers, delivers integrated and complete lessons,
enables easy customization, provides systematic access to client-side and
server-side support,
and allows these independently developed components
to interoperate seamlessly.
In short WME seeks to create a Web for Mathematics Education
to foster a new paradigm for supporting and
delivering mathematics education, and to help mathematics curricula improve exponentially.
Middle School Pilot Project
The pilot project conducts classroom trials of
the Web-based Mathematics Education (WME) system to measure the
feasibility, practicality, effectiveness,
and usability of this approach of delivering mathematics education to the
classroom as a supplement for teachers and students.
The pilot project aims to lay the groundwork for further WME R&D.
To put the WME framework to
trial for conducting actual mathematics education in schools,
we are constructing experimental WME sites for
a number of middle and elementary schools in Northeast Ohio
to test the deployment of the WME technology and to collect
valuable feedback from teachers and students.
WME is Different
This diagram illustrates the WME concept.
Compared to existing approaches, WME is different in
many ways and can provide several significant advantages.
Generally, a stand-alone applet, virtual manipulative, or
server-side program supports a narrow set of topics or operations.
They are hard to use by teachers in the classroom.
Building lesson pages to incorporate such tools
requires non-trivial amounts of time, effort, and programming expertise.
Further, these tools are unrelated and do not interoperate to mutually
reinforce.
WME offers classroom-ready lessons and modules
that are complete and interoperable among
all WME sites, therefore maximizing convenience and usability.
Topic and lesson resources help teachers retrieve useful
teaching information from the Web. But these are not a substitute
for complete Web-based curricula, built by experts and
conforming to standards, for entire semesters and
grade levels. WME can deliver such curricula in
lesson pages and modules that teachers can customize, modify, and enhance.
With WME, teachers have an easy and effective way to deliver ready-made
lessons in a tailored form to their classes.
WME is not a general e-learning infrastructure. It focuses
on mathematics education and integrates lessons, manipulatives,
assessment tools, and teacher-student interaction for effective teaching
and learning of mathematics. WME can be used independently or
within a general e-education infrastructure.
Top-ten Advantages of WME
Classroom readiness and accessibility
Adaptable and customizable
Teacher support, convenience, and control
Open, portable and interoperable
Integrated, dynamic, and interactive
Instant assessment and feedback
Concepts not steps
Sharing of expertise and educational methods
Aiding parents and at-home students
Hands-on and self-paced
To see WME in action, visit our school sites.
For a more detailed introduction, please refer to this overview in PDF.
User and System Documentation
Please find introductions and guides to WME, user and system documentation
for WME compontnets on our documentation page
Feedback
Your comments, questions, and suggestions are most welcome. Please
contact us by email: wme@cs.kent.edu.
By visiting and using this site (beyond this entry page),
the Web visitor agrees to the
following stipulations and conditions.
All the materials, programs, lessons, manipulatives and tools
are Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, the WME group.
All the materials are of a research and pre-publication nature.
The materials are in draft form and not published yet. We actively
seek user input, feedback from researchers, school teachers, and students
for improvements. These will be reflected in changes on our site.
The site has not been thoroughly proofread, and may contain spelling
and other errors. Figures and diagrams have not been designed to have
a uniform look and feel. They are included from different contributors
and sources and have been used only as concept indicators for carrying
out our research work on how to effectively deliver mathematics education
on the Web to teachers and students. A more
consistent site and graphical design will be made at a later stage.
Tools, lessons, and other pieces of the WME system are contributed
by different members of the WME group. These individuals are ultimately
responsible for the design and content of such contributions.
The purpose of this site is academic and educational and for
the WME group and its collaborators. General use is allowed only
for the purpose of obtaining and providing feedback for our research work.
Copying or usage of the materials for any other purpose, without written
consent from the WME group, is strictly prohibited.