From: klotz@forum.swarthmore.edu (Gene Klotz)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: The Geometry Forum
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:29:57 GMT
Followup-To: misc.education
Organization: Geometry Forum

The Geometry Forum is a bulletin board devoted to all aspects of geometry
and its teaching.  At this time we're accessible by pointing your news
reader to forum.swarthmore.edu instead of your local news server. 
(Ultimately, we may want to become a regular Usenet newsgroup, but this
seems the most appropriate way to start off.  If your site is interested in
carrying our feed, drop a line). 

We're hoping to attract those of you who simply enjoy geometry, including
high school and college teachers and students, and research geometers. 
There seems to be a revolution or so brewing in the teaching of geometry in
schools and colleges, and "geometric visualization" seems to have taken
over all known sciences and areas of mathematics.  There's lots to discuss.

We have a three year grant from the National Science Foundation to build a
real community.  We'll be making special efforts to get school teachers on
board, since it's a struggle for most to even get on the Internet at this
time.  In particular, we'll be working with Philadelphia teachers (and
others) to develop materials for students and teachers, so they have
something worth the effort.

To be particularly useful for research geometers (and everybody else,
actually), we're going to develop software which will be able to transmit
and interpret symbols and diagrams.  (We know there are other folks working
on this, and if you're working on related protocols or programs, please let
us know!)  At least at first our platform will be the Macintosh, but we
want to keep in touch with related efforts which might be producing useable
software for other machines.

In addition, we plan to work on software which is particularly convenient,
simple, and agreeable to use for the computer-shy (although readers of this
may find it hard to believe, there are a large number of the computer-timid
among our targeted audiences!)

We very much want to hear comments and suggestions from the Internet
community, so please give us a read and let us know what you think.  Send
email to forum@forum.swarthmore.edu or post your thoughts to the
geometry.forum newsgroup.

There is be a welcome message on the group geometry.forum which I urge you
to read.  It contains a brief questionnaire which will only take you a
minute to fill out.  

------------
More on accessing The Geometry Forum:

	o If you use a personal computer hooked up to the Internet, you need
	  an NNTP news reader (Nuntius and NewsWatcher are two Macintosh
	  newsreaders that we have used.  We can send you a copy of Nuntius
	  if you like, and it is also available via ftp).  Set the news
	  server to forum.swarthmore.edu, and read!

	o If you use a unix system, or a terminal hooked up to a unix
	  Internet connection, you need a newsreader that enables you to
	  read Usenet.  Some examples of newsreaders are rn, nn, and trn.
	  If the newsreader has been compiled as an NNTP newsreader,
	  then you may just need to set the NNTP server environment
	  variable to point to forum.swarthmore.edu.  If it was not compiled
	  as an NNTP newsreader, then it may need to be recompiled.  Talk
	  to you local unix guru for answers.
	  
	o If you log on from home using a modem to get to a unix machine,
	  see above.

Basically, you need a news reader that points to forum.swarthmore.edu
instead of your local news server.  Once you've accomplished that, you just
need to read the forum!

We are working on getting Nuntius up and running over a modem, and the
software that we're writing will of course work over a modem.  But that'll
be a little while in coming [LATE BREAKING NEWS: WE HOPE BY THE END OF THIS
WEEK].  Until then, we'll try to help you out as much as possible using
already-existing means.  If you have access to AppleTalk Remote Access,
drop us a line and let us know.

Please send any questions or comments about getting on to
annie@forum.swarthmore.edu.

------------------------------------------------
Gene Klotz   Geometry Forum   Swarthmore College