WebMath: Microworlds

[James White]

We at the New Mathwright Library and Café are pleased to announce
Mathwright32, our new WYSIWYG Microworld builder.  A Mathwright Microworld
is like an applet, with three differences. First, while it is runs in Java
in your reader’s ActiveX enabled browser, it is generally faster than an
applet because it uses a mathematics engine that is housed in the
MathwrightWeb Control -- running on their machine. Second, its
object-oriented design and colloquial interface generally present a more
versatile and expressive learning environment to the reader that applets
can.  And third, authors create these Microworlds with a simple
point-and-click interface that is much easier than Java to learn. 

We invite you to visit the Library at
<http://www.mathwright.com/lr_mathwrightweb.html> and download our free
MathwrightWeb Control to see for yourself what we mean.  You will find in
our Microworlds how easy it is to create and place on your web pages
versatile and expressive mathematical stories, full of interactive
opportunities for your readers to experiment and explore the ideas you
develop.  

Mathwright32 finally brings to web authors a point-and-click WYSIWYG
interface that, together with our object-oriented mathematical scripting
language, reduces the time required to design interactive mathematical web
pages from months to days, and with experience, sometimes to a few hours.  

And what web pages!  Our Microworlds easily display live mathematical
formulas, matrices and expressions, both for input and output, and to help
tell the story.  These formulas appear in our Math Edit fields along with
colorful pictures that can illustrate your points.  

In addition to that, many of our stories are accompanied by live sprite
animations, and interactive graphics, controlled for example by differential
equations determined by user input.  And authors use other visual and audio
cues to bring the topics to life. 

But the most important element of our Microworlds lies behind the scenes, in
the Language.  It was designed to make it easy for our authors to turn their
ideas into dynamic and expressive teaching and learning opportunities.    It
makes use of an object-oriented computer algebra system that has benefited
from over 18 years of development with and by teachers.  

Thus, for example, among the Microworlds already available at the Library to
be viewed in your browser are: Exploring Quadratic Functions,
<http://www.mathwright.com/book_pgs/book502.html>  (a 9-page book that gives
step-by-step symbolic and graphic solutions of quadratic equations and
inequalities that the reader may supply), Cardano
<http://www.mathwright.com/book_pgs/book512.html> (a 13-page book that uses
both abstract algebra and graphical experiments to illustrate Cardano’s
approach to solving cubic equations from a novel point of view), Mathwright
Logo Playground  <http://www.mathwright.com/book_pgs/book501.html>   (a Logo
programming environment with multiple turtles in which readers can create
and save sophisticated Logo interactions among the turtles).  

Like an applet, a Mathwright Microworld is designed to elicit and invite
reader questions by presenting a simple user interface. But a Microworld has
the power and range that a generic applet can seldom achieve, and this makes
possible a wide variety of reader interactions. It invites students to play.
Take a look, see what our authors, all over the world, are talking about.

						James E. White, Director
						Mathwright Library


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