Electronic resources, that is eContent, produced for education ‘’travels well’’ when it can be reused across national borders and in different curricular frameworks. In this talk, we discuss what features of mathematical eContent contribute to making it travel well. In particular, we will talk about semantic markup such as Content MathML and OpenMath, and about metadata descriptions of the learning resources. We will look into ways of producing mathematical eContent and how it can be converted to ad-hoc formats, including those that are accessible. Mathematics that travels well also speaks different languages, and we will show how choosing the right representation format can support multilinguality.
This talk offers a brief survey into the technologies and activities of the JEM, Joining Educational Mathematics, Thematic Network sponsored by the EU.
Learning resources travel well, naturally, if they are high quality and in addition if they

• do not rely on written or spoken language, and when they do, they use an alternative representation also,
• avoid jargon used in country of origin,
• are highly visual
• are modular
• clearly state the IPR

Since mathematics is considered to be a universal language, one would expect any mathematics learning resource to travel well. However, not every format for writing mathematics is created equal. The right choice of format for the representation of the mathematical objects can facilitate or impede adherence to some of these guidelines. Consider for instance the issue of notational conventions used in certain countries but not in others, e.g. interval notation is a good example. If the mathematics is entered using a semantics representation, then notation can be generated depending on the preferences of the user of the document, either by location (France vs. USA) or by context (engineering vs. physics). Moreover, this mechanism extends also to the generation of formats that support alternative modalities of presentations such as aural or via assistive devices. Braille notation, which for mathematics is different in every country, can be more easily produced from a source in which the actual meaning of the mathematics is expressed. On the other hand, if the mathematics is represented only via images, there is very little one can do to change the notations or to run a screen reader or even to resize the formulae.
Additional benefits of a semantic representation are connected to the possibility of carrying out meaningful searches on the content or to mine the content for automatic tagging. The discovery of a learning resource, one that can be reused in the classroom, relies on the usage of appropriate keywords and of metadata standards which describe its characteristics, including the IPR.
Within the JEM Thematic Network, we have developed a repository of learning resources that can be commented and reviewed by users and are meant to show the technologies developed by some of the partners of the network. Semantic markup technologies are used to support interactive and multilingual exercises, to support accessibility of resources, but also to adapt to different communities of practice