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Conference rusure::math

Title:Mathematics at DEC
Moderator:RUSURE::EDP
Created:Mon Feb 03 1986
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2083
Total number of notes:14613

1733.0. "Geometry Forum" by 3D::ROTH (Geometry is the real life!) Fri Mar 19 1993 12:53

   I received a pointer to this and thought it may be of some interest.

   - Jim


The Geometry Forum is a bulletin board devoted to all aspects of geometry
and its teaching.  The Forum currently consists of seven newsgroups: 
geometry.announcements, geometry.college, geometry.forum,
geometry.institutes, geometry.pre-college, geometry.puzzles, and
geometry.research.

At this time we're accessible by pointing your news reader to
forum.swarthmore.edu instead of your local news server, or you can
subscribe to the mailing lists by sending a message to
majordomo@forum.swarthmore.edu.  The body of the message should read
'help'.  (See the end of this message for more in-depth information about how
go about reading the Forum newsgroups.)

Note:  We are also feeding these newsgroups to a lot of different sites. 
They may already be available on your system.  Please check for them on
your local site first.

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 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:

There are two ways to get at the Forum.  One is using newsreading software.
The other is by subscribing to our mailing lists.

To access the Forum using newsreading software:

Note:  We are also feeding these newsgroups to a lot of different sites. 
They may already be available on your system.  Please check for them on
your local site before trying the rest of these instructions.

Most people read news at their local sites - that is, they run their
newsreading application, which points to the local news server by default,
and the newsgroups show up.  To read the Forum, however, you must get your
newsreader to point to _our_ site instead of your local one.  This involves
setting the NNTP news server variable to forum.swarthmore.edu.  This ranges
from easy to impossible, depending on how you read news.

        o If you use a personal computer hooked up directly to the Internet,
          such as in your office or classroom, you need an NNTP news reader.
          Nuntius and NewsWatcher are two Macintosh newsreaders that we have
          used.  NewsGrazer is a program available for the NeXT.  We currently
          don't know of any such newsreaders for the PC.  Set the news
          server to forum.swarthmore.edu, and read!

          (We can send you Nuntius, or you can get it off our ftp server,
          forum.swarthmore.edu in the Nuntius directory.  NewsGrazer is
          available from nyu.edu via ftp.)

        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.  

          You can check this yourself.  While logged into your unix account,
          type 'printenv'.  This will (usually) give you a list of your local
          environment variables.  If one of them is NNTPSERVER, then call me
          on the phone (800 756-7823), unless you know how to change this (if
          you're not sure, you probably don't, and there are too many ways to
          mess up your account to risk it).  If NNTPSERVER is not one of them,
          then you need to ask your system administrator what to do, or look
          into one of the other options listed, like the one below.

          Another way to access the Forum newsgroups is to ask the system
          administrators at your site if they would be willing to accept a
          feed of the forum newsgroups.  Then they would just appear as regular
          newsgroups on your system.

        o If you log on from home using a modem to get to a unix machine,
          see above.

To subscribe to the Forum mailing lists:

        o Send a message to majordomo@forum.swarthmore.edu.  The body of the
          message should contain the word 'help'.  The subject line will not
          be processed.  This will send you a document that should tell you
          everything you need to know.

Please send any questions or comments about accessing the Forum to
annie@forum.swarthmore.edu.

       Annie Fetter        |   The Geometry Forum   | Voice: 215 328-8225
   Project Coordinator     |   Swarthmore College   |        800 756-7823
annie@forum.swarthmore.edu |   Swarthmore PA 19081  |   Fax: 215 328-7824


% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
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% Received: from [130.58.65.12] ([130.58.65.12]) by forum.swarthmore.edu with SMTP id <9874>; Fri, 19 Mar 1993 09:37:33 -0500
% To: gauss::roth (Jim Roth)
% From: Annie Fetter <annie@forum.swarthmore.edu> (Annie Fetter)
% X-Sender: fetter@forum.swarthmore.edu
% Subject: Re: Re: *** Perspective Geometry ***
% Message-Id: <93Mar19.093733est.9874@forum.swarthmore.edu>
% Date: 	Fri, 19 Mar 1993 09:37:21 -0500
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