Abstract: We demonstrate how topological singularity invariants are the key to “seeing” geometry inside of fundamental groups of function fields of surfaces, and explain the relation to Grothendieck’s program of Anabelian Geometry.

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics (www.centerofmath.org) is located midway between Harvard and Central Squares, at 929 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, in Suite #102. Travel to the Center by public transportation is easy via the #1 bus, or by taking the subway (the T) to Central Square, and walking for 10 minutes. Suite #102 is located on floor 01.

All attendees will need to sign a release form, as the lecture will be recorded for distribution on the Web.

Last week the team from the Worldwide Center of Mathematics attended the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM) at Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The JMM is the largest annual mathematics meeting in the world with participants ranging from students to leading researchers in mathematics as well as innovators in the field of mathematical education programs. This year the JMM had approximately 7,000 attendees; a new record. We received a larger response than ever by faculty and students looking for affordable and open source textbooks, as well as free online resources.

Easily Share Information with Different Groups of People

Is Google+ an acceptable way educators can connect with their students on social networks? We think so- here’s why. One huge advantage over Facebook is that you are able to create “circles” that group your contacts into categories you create. Instead of adding a student as a “friend” and then giving them access to your Facebook wall, pictures and friends- you can simply add your students into a circle, and then choose what you want to share with them. For example, you can group each of your students into specific courses or classes and communicate with each circle individually.

Google+ and its circles also make it easy to network with other educators across the globe. Teachers can create teacher circles where they can share lesson plans, on-line resources and more. This has the potential to replace popular listservs that fill your inbox with thousands of e-mails that may not all be relavent to you.

Post Messages Instantly for Your Colleagues or Students

One benefit of social networks like Twitter is instant posting. Like Twitter, Google+ has a stream feature (with no limit on characters) that allows users to post messages. Unlike Twitter, you can choose whether the post will be visible to the public or only specified circles. For example, just say your students’ AP test scores were just put on-line. You could message your student circle (or even a parent circle) and let them know instantly that the scores have been posted:

Often teachers make their tweets private on Twitter to make sure that students do not read more personal tweets that are intended for their followers. Google+ makes it possible and easy to have a public page but be selective in what people see what information.

Share Relevant News and Recommend Resources

Another great aspect of Google+ for educators is its integration with google search. When you find a great article or website, you can click the +1 button next to the site on the search results page. This will make the site then appear in your Google+ account in the ‘+1’s’ section.

This is a great tool for educators to share resources, articles and references with students and other educators. Google says, “+1 gets conversations going. Click the +1 button to give something your public stamp of approval. Then, if you want to share right away, add a comment and send it to the right circles on Google+.” If you have created a circle for your class- you can share great articles relating to a particular topic or class with them easily while including a comment with your point of view.

A New Approach to Group Projects

Google+ will also be a great tool for educators to recommend to students for use in group projects. The Hangouts feature allows “face-to-face-to-face chat”- making it easy for students to connect with other students across the country and abroad. Students can use live video chat and hold meetings or work sessions without leaving their dorm rooms.

“Spark” Your Own Personal Interests

Finally, Google+ is a great tool for educators to continue learning and expand their current interests with information from the web. On the Sparks page, you can add interests that will collect stories and information on those particular subjects. For example, let’s say you teach mathematics. You can add it as an interest so you will be kept up to date on the world of mathematics.

Sparks presents a way to generate conversations with friends or other people that share your interest, while also using the +1 tool to recommend links that are recommended by other users.

Since Google+ is in beta testing, there are a limited number of users as well as a few glitches they are working through. Also, Google+ is only made available for people 18 years or older- so this would not be ideal for students in K-12. However, it is ideal for university-level courses, or for teachers to connect with one another. We highly recommend you check it out if you are given access- and share with us ways you think this new social network may benefit students and educators!

What is often overlooked about the education market though is the stark difference between it versus a more traditional B2B or B2C market. Many of the companies emerging today have not taken the time to understand the nuances of the market and thus will face significant challenges ahead as they attempt to expand. In order for these companies to ultimately make a positive impact on the education system, the entrepreneurs, educators, and investors behind them most make more of an effort to educate both themselves and others on these nuances and what will make a successful ed-tech company.

Concept of Customer vs. End User

In September 2006, Economist James Koch labeled the textbook industry a “broken market” as a way to describe the relationship between the end user (the student) and the person making the decision on what that end user has to buy (faculty). The education industry as a whole could be deemed a broken market because, in many instances, faculty are making decisions for students about what they have to purchase and the students have no influence on that decision (other than to refuse to make the purchase).

While most entrepreneurs and companies are aware of the way the market is structured, very few of them fully understand the ramifications of that structure and how to succeed in a market such as this. In order to create a product or service that gains significant attraction, companies need to focus on creating value in the eyes of both the teachers and the students. This is a very difficult proposition at the K-12 level as most schools are so financially strapped that a product or service must generate significant returns for students to even be considered. In the higher education world, while students may be told by a faculty member they need a certain product or service, but the students are not forced to make the purchase. With tuition costs increasing rapidly, the product or service must have a direct impact on the students’ grades or else it will more than likely be ignored in favor of the cost savings.

Alignment of Values

Like any market, the reason there has been a resurgence in investment dollars within the education market is because of the potential for large returns. The US spends over $600 billion a year on education, which is significantly more than any other country in the world, and it is well-documented that this spending has not resulted in an improvement of student performance. Education is a market in which returns should be measured not only in financial terms, but also the impact new innovations have on students and teachers. By not focusing on both of these objectives, investors will experience the same dismal returns they experienced during the last ed-tech investment boom because the positive effects created by these new companies will be fleeting due to a lack of long-term sustainability.

Lack of Educator Involvement

While most companies have some educators on staff or contracted as consultants, there is still not involvement by these educators in shaping the innovations of tomorrow. In order to spur change within the industry, specialized knowledge is required to create products and services that will in fact improve student performance; the only way to gain that expertise is by truly engaging educators and using their knowledge to influence the development of products and services. Companies need information from educators who are working in the classroom every day and dealing with students on a personal level. For the ed-tech community to truly begin to have an impact of the education system, entrepreneurs need to be more focused on creating meaningful products and services and less focused on creating useless rhetoric to define their newly-created innovations.

When it comes to textbooks, it is safe to assume that publishers who charge $200+ for their textbooks would not want their student purchasers to have the ability to share their digital textbooks (eTextbooks). With DRM, we can imagine these billion-dollar textbook publishers have only a few major options to protect their texts:

1. Restrict access. To control the use of the eTextbook, publishers could employ a licensing server that locks the use to a specific PC or Mac computer. However, in a student environment, when studying or homework can be done on an iPad, laptop, library computer or even an iPhone- this may limit the usage on college campuses for students.

2. Password Protect. Although passwords can be issued through programs like SharePoint, there are just as many if not more software packages, like PDF Unlocker, which allow users to break into locked the documents. However, if they have the money and the resources to create a non-standard DRM system, they may be successful.

3. Lock digital rights. When offering eTextbooks publishers could secure the digital rights to USB drives or other medias and will therefore charge the same amount or more than their current printed textbooks justified by the cost of the large storage space.

As opposed to the alternatives above, the Pottermore online reading experience is watermarking each eBook at the time of purchase with the identity of the person who purchased the eBook. “While strict DRM ensures that you are the rights holder before you can access the content, digital watermarking (sometimes known as social DRM) simply associates the file to the purchaser. This means that e-Books can be used across any platform, but if they are uploaded to file-sharing websites, the copyright holder should be able to tell which purchaser was responsible (although any file-sharer worth their salt would know how to remove such a watermark),” said Wired.co.uk. They say this is so authorities can track down the “sharer” of the ebook, but it prevents the purchaser from sharing the eBook with someone who did not pay for it by effectively shaming him or her for his or her illegal behavior (although, people often lend out printed books to friends, and they are not often thought of as book pirates.) This watermark strategy challenges the purchaser removes the anonymity of illegal sharing, and pressures him or her to “do the right thing.”

This evolution of eBook and eTextbook can also be compared to consumer purchasing in the music industry. Although there are several free music-sharing, platforms, there are now over 75 million accounts on iTunes linked to credit cards. Obviously people, somewhere, are choosing to purchase their music as opposed to stealing it digitally. Our conclusion is that if the purchaser can justify the 99 cents it costs to buy a song, they will also justify a reasonable price for an eBook or eTextbook and choose to purchase it instead of steal it.

The Center of Math is looking to discover new and innovative ways to release our eTextbooks in a fully functional, fully interactive and DRM-free way. Therefore, we believe if we charge an affordable and reasonable price for our eTextbooks and grant students free-use of the download (as if they purchased the hard-copy text at the bookstore) they will justify this purchase and choose not to share infringe on the copyright.

But just a thought… if these eTextbooks were to be openly shared with the world and math was made available to anyone and everyone, would that be so bad? We don’t think so.

Question for the Math World: Do you think that eBooks should be DRM-free?

Sources:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2081247/rowling-unveils-pottermore-drm-free-harry-potter-ebooks
http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/23/harry-potter-e-books-drm
]]> http://www.centerofmath.org/blog/the-social-drm-evolution-for-ebooks/feed/ 0 http://www.centerofmath.org/blog/upcoming-research-lecture-jose-seade-of-unam-cuernavaca-to-speak-on-friday-may-13-2011/ http://www.centerofmath.org/blog/upcoming-research-lecture-jose-seade-of-unam-cuernavaca-to-speak-on-friday-may-13-2011/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:58:27 +0000 Brian L http://www.centerofmath.org/blog/?p=418 Please join us on Friday, May 13, 2011 as José Seade of UNAM, Cuernavaca will be giving a lecture on Milnor fibrations for real singularities. We will be serving coffee, tea, and cookies starting at 3:30pm and the lecture will begin at 3:45pm.  The lectures will be held in our studio classroom at 929 Massachusetts Avenue Suite #102 in Cambridge. The abstract for Dr. Seade’s talk is listed below and we look forward to seeing you!

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics (www.centerofmath.org) is located midway between Harvard and Central Squares, at 929 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, in Suite #102. Travel to the Center by public transportation is easy via the #1 bus, or by taking the subway (the T) to Central Square, and walking for 10 minutes. Suite #102 is located on floor 01.

All attendees will need to sign a release form, as the lecture will be recorded for distribution on the Web.

The digital textbooks we offer have begun to attract some attention within the high school and college markets due to their high quality, multimedia approach to learning and their affordability. On April 8, we had someone from the Virginia Beach City Public  Schools (VBCPS)  reach out to us and say that they would love to check out the books. In order to be considered for adoption, we had to submit a request for proposal (RFP) to their procurement department, which did not seem unreasonable; however, this is where the fun began.
Assuming that the procurement office would have the RFP on hand for potential proposers, we reached out to this office to ask how one obtained a copy of the RFP. It turns out that just to be granted permission to read the RFP, one has to pay $10 to a government contractor (DemandStar Onvia) whose only function it seems is to host static PDF documents on a server for download. While $10 is a trivial amount of money, the fact that a government contractor exists simply to fulfill this role is slightly ridiculous.

After obtaining and reading the RFP, a significant amount of information was requested, but not so much as was unreasonable; it would make sense that a school district would want to know all of the credentials of an organization creating books to educate their children. However, several stipulations regarding the preparation and delivery of the RFP were some of the most inefficient and wasteful directions we had ever read. According to the RFP, six printed copies of the proposal had to be submitted to the procurement office via traditional mail as well as an electronic copy either via email or on a DVD with the 6 printed copies. Why, in what is the Internet age, would any government office request that an organization print out and waste over one hundred pieces of paper when the exact same information could be relayed via a PDF attached to an email also puzzled us. The package of printed copies also  had to be delivered to the procurement office by 3pm on April 14 or it would not be considered.

We complied with all of these guidelines and shipped our proposal package with an electronic copy on DVD at 8am on April 12 via USPS with delivery confirmation. We also submitted a PDF version of the proposal via email as a precautionary measure. According to USPS, our package arrived at the VBCPS building at 9:05am the morning of April 14, roughly 6 hours before the deadline for the RFP. When following up with the procurement office though, our proposal did not get delivered from the VBCPS mailroom to the procurement office until April 15 at 10:22am, which disqualified us from being considered for adoption.

As we had complied with all of the guidelines of the RFP and the proposal had been delivered to the physical office of the VBCPS, we assumed it was just a misunderstanding that would be rectified with a phone call. Instead we were told by the procurement office that there was nothing they could do and the decision would stand. The representative from the VBCPS told us that even if the package had arrived three days before and never made it to the procurement office by 3pm on April 14, it was not their problem (he admitted this had happened in the past). Instead, he decided to blame us for submitting our proposal so close to the deadline (which he does have a point about), even though we only became aware of the need for textbooks only 5 days before.

This whole scenario is definitely disheartening on a number of levels. First, everyone knows that traditional textbooks are massively expensive and now the VBCPS students are being deprived of even the opportunity to have considered for their use a high-quality, very low-priced, more functional, modern textbook. Second, and more importantly, it makes us wonder how many times every year smaller organizations that are actually trying to improve education (vs the major publishers who clearly are more concerned with their profit margins) are shut out of processes like these due to incompetent bureaucrats.

The Worldwide Center of Mathematics (www.centerofmath.org) is located midway between Harvard and Central Squares, at 929 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, in Suite #102. Travel to the Center by public transportation is easy via the #1 bus, or by taking the subway (the T) to Central Square, and walking for 10 minutes. Suite #102 is located on floor 01.

All attendees will need to sign a release form, as the lecture will be recorded for distribution on the Web.

Bookshare.org (bookshare.org)

The mission of BookShare is to make the world of print available to those with disabilities. People with print disabilities deserve to enjoy reading as much as all other readers. Yet, currently fewer than five percent of the books needed by people with print disabilities are available in accessible formats such as digital text or digital Braille. Bookshare’s goal is to raise the floor of access so that people with print disabilities can obtain a broad spectrum of print materials at the same time as everyone else.

Eleven Learning (elevenlearning.com)

Eleven Learning works together with the academic community to make better college textbooks. Our books are more relevant, more up-to-date, and less expensive. Our product offerings, currently in beta, include a web-based textbook reading interface and a community for textbook authors and educators.

Equalis (equalis.com)

Equalis is the innovative on-line destination for the mathematics community. It provides the most vibrant and far reaching math-centric community on the internet, enabling the free flow of ideas, cutting-edge research, open source software, problem solving, open innovation and job opportunities for individuals and organizations with a common interest in math and math-centric endeavors.

Firehoze (firehoze.com)

Firehoze provides short, targeted video lessons designed to supplement learning activities — whether you’re in or out of the classroom. Not only that, it provides you the community where you can establish a study group, share notes, etc. It is a 24/7 resource center to help you understand your classes and achieve better grades.

Global Text Project (globaltext.terry.uga.edu)

The Global Text Project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a website. Distribution will also be possible via paper, CD, or DVD. Our goal initially is to focus on content development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate. The goal is to make textbooks available to the many who cannot afford them

ProctorCam (proctorcam.com)

ProctorCam is a virtual online proctoring service offered to test takers and organizations that require proctored tests. Test takers no longer have to drive to a proctored site or use unfamiliar equipment. ProctorCam provides organizations the ability for test takers to take their exams using their own equipment, at their convenience and at their chosen location.

Veritas Tutors (veritutors.com)

Veritas Tutors is a full-service education consultancy specializing in test preparation, admissions consultation, and subject tutoring for students of all ages.  We provide instruction in our beautiful center in Harvard Square, in your Greater Boston home, or anywhere in the world through our cutting-edge online tutoring platform.