From: fetter@forum.swarthmore.edu (Annie Fetter)
Newsgroups: k12.ed.math
Subject: Re: GEOMETRY.FORUM
Date: 11 Jan 93 19:14:51 GMT
Organization: The Geometry Forum
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A7773111C801410C@olmo.swarthmore.edu>
X-Xxdate: Mon, 11 Jan 93 14:13:37 GMT
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d11

In article <36103.2B4D9B7E@puddle.fidonet.org> Sheila King,
Sheila.King@f315.n103.z1.fidonet.org writes:
>To:  <JOEYC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
>
>I have a question regarding your recent post in K12_Math:
>Is there any way that this forum could be gated to this newsgroup?
>
Sheila,

I would love to talk to you about hooking up some sort of link between
The Geometry
Forum and k12.ed.math.  I am the Project Coordinator for the Forum.  I
have attached
to this posting a little description of the Forum for the others reading
this who might
like some more information

Please call me (800 756-7823) and hopefully we can work something out.

I would also like to hear from folks who have email accounts on the
Internet, as
opposed to just Fidonet, and find out if you think if might be feasible
to set up a
feed of the Geometry Forum to your site.

	-Annie
	 Project Coordinator, The Geometry Forum
	 Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

*************

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!

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