Minister of Education, Culture, Sports，Science and Technology Award (School Education Section)
Hokkaido Society of Practical Mathematics Education, High School Arithmetic & Mathematics Education Research Group (Hokkaido Prefecture)

1．Aims of the Activity

　Hokkaido Society of Practical Mathematics Education，High School Arithmetic & Mathematics Education Research Group was established in 1994 by a group of highschool teachers in Sapporo City.

　Today's education underlines "the wide-ranging needs of mathematics education in the information society." Teachers are expected not only "to foster students' systematical ways of thinking in mathematics" but also "to foster students' willingness to actively use the concepts" and to promote them to be proactive and highly motivated．

　Based on the expection mentioned above，the Group intents to "analyze high school mathematics learning materials and the relation between each material, and to makes students efficiently understand the essential meaning of the learning material." Therefore，the Society has been engaged in activities emphasizing consistently on "research and analysis of the learing materials."

　By making the existing research work online，a network-based learing material database "Spring of Mathematics" was developed in 1997，planning to accumulate the data of the learning material contents．

　The Group aims at "public disclosure," "collaboration," and "accumulation." These three are to be the pillar，and the Group not only hopes to make its website open on the Internet, but also wishes to make it more mathematics education-based.

2．Special Features / Methods / Points of Emphasis

　The biggest feature of the website is that it includes daily researches on learning materials and practical records of teaching procedure, written by a number of authors. By digitalizing daily contents and making the website available to the public, we plan to collect more opinions from the public and to reflect it to the teaching activity．

　The most important content of the online database is "Collaborative Studies on specific topics." Each topic may develop further on to a better learning material through examining and deepenlng from a different perspective.

　The website basically contains contents on the Group's activities; however, features of the Web have enabled offers from out of Hokkaido too.

3．Contents of the Aclivity

　Wide range of topics is covered in the contents.

　"Topics of Mathematics" : collecting various topics beyond the classroom walls and school textbooks. "Practical Records of teaching procedure / Remarks / Reports" : containing various ideas of daily school lessons in mathematics education. "Topic-specific Collaborative Studies" : examinlng specific topic from various angles. The "Hokkaido High School Mathematics Competition" : aiming to improve high school students' mathematical skills in Hokkaido as well as finding students with unique ideas. Furthemore, it contains "Kotewaza of Mathematics," "Treasure Box of Mathematics" : which are hints of teaching practical research over the years in series.

　In addition, an e-mail list is distributed to promote an exchange of opinions on a daily basis.

4．Results of the Activity

　It is important that even a little ingenuities in school lessons or researches on learning materials are taken over and improved afterwards by others. These worthy contents and practical reports should not be wasted. Accumulating previous works and research contents is one of the most diplomatic ways of utilizing the advantages of computer network such as "infomation collection and storage" and "elimination of regional characteristics."

　The Group's off-line activities and the publicized contents on the website are closely related and played a critical role in gathering more teachers and bringing their power together. The Group plays a central role in grass-roots research organizing and distributing infomation in the large Hokkaido region.

　In recent years, it is said that research organizations' activities are declining, but our Group has developed the cooperation with teachers in and out of Hokkaido. Cooperation on the Web as well as online communication has provided us a great deal of experience and energy. We learned that, even in the computer network communication era, human network is the most important thing.

　In addition, we received opinions and questions from people engaged in mathematics education as well as from a wide range of individuals who are purely interested in mathematics.

5．Prospects and Future Issues

　To maintain the Group's activities in daily basis, cooperation among member teachers are essential. We must contrive ways in order to manage the website by refrecting what the member teachers think and require. The improvement of the Group activities itself is the necessary requirement for further improvement in contents.

　Moreover, considering the website contents as the base for information transmission, listed below are future issues for improvement of the Group website:

• Constructing a system that enables users to search necessary infomation from the huge volumes of contents.
• Providing contents to the public in an easy-to-understand and user-friendly format.
• Gathering opinions and questions from high school students to develop a website which students can also participate.
• Developing a system for self-learning on the Internet which is now under development.

　Potentials over the Internet are widely expanding. However, while the number of personal web pages is increasing, the number of organizational web pages is rather limited. Thinking of such situations, releasing the website contents in order to enhance mathematics education for the wide users continues to be required.