23 May 23rd 2004 2004 G. Khaznadar (GNU FDL) GeorgesKhaznadar Professeur de physique au lycée Jean Bart - Dunkerque, membre de l'association OFSET gekhajofour@netinfo.fr

WIMS is not a training application like many others. You can enter whatever room in the world, provided it is connected to Internet, and say to your students « Please, worksheet number 4 » and it works. That is the reality. You can verify it in each of the neighboring boots, for instance with the server hosted by CRI74 : http://wims.ofset.org/wims When an educative application has been developed with WIMS it becomes more available than any other educative application: it is as robust and redundant than an internet service mirrored in many places around the world. Exercise pages distributed by WIMS are at the format HTML, with a few JAVASCRIPT scripts. This bounds interaction methods. However WIMS promotes the work on high level concepts. In year 2004, the core of WIMS (version 3.36) allows the following interactions for students: Writing a reply in a one-line text field, Writing a multi-line text reply, Choose a reply within a list, Clicking on a spot of an image, Move around colored tags to make relations between them. At least for scientific exercises, there are sophisticated analysis engines: so a reply can be input into a symbolic calculus. For example a formula for kinetic energy can be type in either forms like: « 1/2*m*v^2 », or « 0.5*m*v*v », and be recognized in both cases. All equivalent mathematical expressions will be matched whatever their complexity. Computable numbers or expressions The value is analyzed taking in account a precision parameter. An expression non fully calculated can eventually be accepted. Formal expression, equation What is analyzed there is whether the formula is exact or not. For instance expressions for the law of Ohm like « U=R*I » and « R=U/I » will be recognized as equivalent. Multi-number structures Sets, vectors, matrices. Specialists know how to compare them, WIMS knows also. Numbers with units Replys like « 5 cm » or « 50 mm » will be accepted and analyzed as equivalent. It is the same with « 1 h 20 min » and « 4800e3 ms ». The mechanism which is used is the most robust, it relies on dimensional analysis. Chemical equations WIMS knows how to analyze expressions like the equation of the synthesis of water: « H2 + 1/2 O2 ----> H2O », parse them, recognize if they are equilibrated, output correctly typeset images like $H_2\,+\,\frac{1}{2}O_2\longrightarrow\,H_2O$ The WIMS system does not communicate high level concepts by itself, students do so as soon as they work in collaboration. All well designed WIMS modules feature generating exercises with random data. Let two students sit as neighbors, and work with the same WIMS exercise, and let them collaborate.Spontaneously they exchange « high level » concepts. You can effectively note do exchange method elements to help themselves for resolving problems. Please click here , and there , this will pop up two windows on the same exercise, for two distinct students. They can still help themselves by saying « click on the right » or « click on the left », but one often notes that the students exchange at a very higher level, for example with the sentence « You're too XXX, an absolute value is always positive! ».

You can access WIMS with any browser complying with the HTML normalizations. WIMS can structure the access to exercises in various complementary and useful ways. Virtual classes Every teacher can create a virtual class, have her students subscribed in it, assign them works and fetch informations about their progresses. In a virtual class it is possible to define exercise sheets, courses bound with exercises, and exams. Forums Each virtual class owns a forum were messages are easily exchanged. Wims forums are up to now the only ones allowing easily exchanging maths formulas correctly typeset. It is always possible to create hyperlinks between pages served by WIMS and other distant learning systems, or other group workplaces. You can now assign a WIMS exercise sheet to a student virtually sent by another system, transparently.

WIMS has allowed to design many exercises and to work out many educational schedules, from primary school to university. Gang XIAO (the inventor of WIMS) is professor in the University of Nice, and has developed several exercises adapted to his students. The community developing exercises is growing, there are now contents adapted to an increasing number of teaching levels. You can find a list sorted by educational levels for France , in the FAQ of WIMS. The development of applications targeting classes in schools and colleges is a challenge for associations of teachers, and also a point where the action of institutional partners may be important. The increasing quantity of exercises embedding much educational know-how, on a platform reachable from the whole world, promotes international collaborations, and contributes to enriching cultural contacts. For instance, the translation of a french tutorial for beginning with WIMS to Spanish , thanks to the works of developers of the University of Cádiz who set up a local WIMS service . The translation of the text is finished, screenshots will be realized soon with the Spanish version of the server and the leader of the project, Juan Rafael Fernandez widely solicited colleagues he knows for translations and/or creation of educational contents. WIMS' author, Gang XIAO, defined a simple language enabling to generate interesting exercises, named OEF (Open Exercise Format). It is a productivity tool. In the bottom of the main page of a WIMS server, you find a link « Create my own simple interactive exercises  ». Don't hesitate, click it. The following pages are an excellent guide leading you to generate within about 5 minutes an interactive exercise (for instance try to generate an exercise for training to remember the multiplication table for the number 7). One day of training or self-training is enough to become able to design for the WIMS service various educational ideas. If the created modules are published with a license allowing the copy and the diffusion, it is a first step into a wonderful operation of sharing our educative resources.

Hyperlinks to WIMS are numerous. Here is a selection. General search engines To target a search, don't forget adding keywords to "WIMS". Example: a search with Google and the keywords WIMS puzzle . The website of WIMS' author It is at the University of Nice . Websites maintained by the speaker It is at CRI74 (Archamps, Haute-Savoie, France), and also at LAMIA (Lille, département du Nord, France), and in the "intranet" of lycée Jean Bart (Dunkerque, département du Nord, France). Official mirrors of WIMS These are in various locations in the world . Here is a selection of WIMS activities allowing to quickly grasp an idea of the possibilities of this web service. Plot curves... and animate them A fabulous curve plotter for static or animated representations. Click on a map of France The creation of this exercise of geometry has required to input the coordinates of a point in each department. WIMS can automatically find the borders of the departments based on the color of the image or of a simplified version of it. An atom of chemistry ... Try to equilibrate chemical reactions. Move labels Many teachers develop interactive exercises with the excellent tool Hot Potatoes , a proprietary application using the free javascript library DynAPI . WIMS uses the same free library, an allows to design the same exercises, here is an example . Learn reading the time WIMS has a rich library of reusable components, for example this clock , which is used in an important exercise suite. I thank you in advance for every information about introduction documents for WIMS if you are aware of them. Here are some examples: Inline help of WIMS This inline help is integrated in the WIMS service. Here is a link, for instance . The FAQ of Wims This FAQ is maintained thanks to the coordination by Bernadette Perrin-Riou, at the University of Orsay. A tutorial to begin with Wims Quickly learn how to create an interactive exercise, open a virtual class and have your students subscribe to it, add (new or already existing) exercises in this class. This tutorial is available in french and soon in Spanish . A talk of Gang XIAO ... given in the CRI74, in February 2001 , you can access its video record . Wims embedded on a CDROM Two CDROMS published now allow you to test a local WIMS server after a boot-up in just 3 minutes: The CDROM Freeduc-CD, developed by the association OFSET (Organization for Free Software in Education and Training), which you can get after the talk. This one contains in addition 40 educative applications useful for all education levels. The CDROM Knowims, developed by Gang XIAO. This one features in addition a selection of applications useful for teaching maths. When a CDROM boots up with a WIMS service, it is reachable with the web browser (Mozilla), at the URL http://localhost/wims/ . The server is also available for other machines connected to the same local area network. Here is an example of a training session where this technique was explained (in french).