Philipp Larmann – MathCityMap

Generic Tasks: Velocity

The new article on Generic Tasks is dedicated to a task from the ” Velocity ” category. With the help of the task wizard, this task can be created in the shortest possible time, as always, and the corresponding object can be found everywhere in your environment, especially in urban areas. You can read the […]

The new article on Generic Tasks is dedicated to a task from the ” Velocity ” category. With the help of the task wizard, this task can be created in the shortest possible time, as always, and the corresponding object can be found everywhere in your environment, especially in urban areas. You can read the first article on Generic Tasks, which also tells you how to get to the task wizard and what Generic Tasks are, here.

The object we are going to look at in this article is escalators. They are often found in public buildings or at the entrances to subway stations or train stations. The task that is available for escalators in the task wizard is:

“Determine the speed of the escalator. Give the result in meter per second. Give the result with two decimal places.”

Required for creating the task are the time duration, which the escalator needs to travel a well-defined distance. In addition, you can select whether the speed should be specified in m/s or in km/h. Based on the entered data, the wizard fills in the rest of the task form and only a picture needs to be added to complete the task.

In the next article we will deal with the probably most special category of Generic Tasks, the so-called GPS tasks. Until then, have fun and save time when creating MCM tasks with the Task Wizard!

Trail of the month: Bruneck a little different.

The Trail of the Month of June comes from the small medieval town of Bruneck in the region of South Tyrol in northern Italy. Here, Melanie Forer and her third-grade students created the trail “Bruneck einmal anders” (Brunico a little different), which can be accessed with the MCM app under the code 353905 and is […]

The Trail of the Month of June comes from the small medieval town of Bruneck in the region of South Tyrol in northern Italy. Here, Melanie Forer and her third-grade students created the trail “Bruneck einmal anders” (Brunico a little different), which can be accessed with the MCM app under the code 353905 and is available on the MathCityMap web portal here.

The trail consists of a total of six tasks that mostly revolve around the topics of areas and volume calculation of basic and composite objects and areas. In addition, of course, you have the pleasure of getting to know Bruneck from a completely different perspective, while at the same time visiting sights such as the castle of Bruneck.

An interview about the creation of the trail and her experiences with MathCityMap is given by Melanie Forer below:

How did you come across the MathCityMap project?

I got to know MathCityMap in the context of the further training ” Mathematical Trails” of the Pedagogical Department in South Tyrol. Using the example of the project “matematica in città” in Bolzano, we interested teachers were invited to observe the environment with a mathematical eye and then familiarize ourselves with the app MathCityMap. The possibility to formulate and solve mathematical questions at extracurricular learning sites appealed to me very much, so I also brought this idea to my class, where it immediately received a lot of approval.

Where is your trail located? What is special about your trail?

The small medieval town of Bruneck in South Tyrol, Italy impresses with its castle and the famous town alley. In 1741, the Ursuline Order settled in Brunico and in the following years the Ursuline Sisters built a church, convent, boarding school and school. Pupils of this equated secondary school have created the mathtrail “Bruneck einmal anders”, which is described as follows:

Starting from the school entrance at the Ursuline Church, the route goes through the eponymous Ursuline Gate via the historic Stadtgasse up to the Upper Town. From there it continues up to Bruneck Castle and across the suspension bridge to Hermann-Staudacher-Platz. Afterwards the trail goes back to the Schlossberg, down to the Rainkirche and over the trench to the Hintergasse. With the trail it is possible to get a new perspective on the sights of Bruneck by putting otherwise inconspicuous, everyday, geometric figures and bodies in the center of attention.

How do you use MCM and why?

I use MathCityMap to offer very practical, modern mathematics lessons that are close to the students’ lives. Through new digital media, such as MathCityMap, the student world can become a place of learning and a new approach to mathematics can be created. The mathematical perspective no longer remains only in the classroom, but is increasingly applied in the playground, on the way to school or in leisure time.

This school year, I will again be working with a small group of students to collect new tasks and take on the mathematical challenge.

Describe your favorite task on the trail. How can it be solved?

My favorite task is the “bridge at the castle”. With a bit of a thrill, but of course with maximum safety, you can enjoy a wonderful view of Bruneck Castle. The task is to measure the area of the fence and calculate the cost of redesigning it. The special thing here is the varied approach to determining the length, with measuring and counting with meter tape folding rule or other aids such as thread, step length, etc.. To be able to solve the task, basic knowledge of calculating the area of rectangles and an understanding of direct proportionality is needed.

The first MCM partner schools of Slovakia

Also from Slovakia the first schools are joining the partner school program of MathCityMap. We are very happy to welcome “ZŠ s MŠ Lipovce” and “Základná škola Revúca” as the new and fifth / sixth partner school, which successfully passed the application process. The process at ZŠ s MŠ Lipovce was initiated by Sylvia Smolková, […]

Also from Slovakia the first schools are joining the partner school program of MathCityMap. We are very happy to welcome “ZŠ s MŠ Lipovce” and “Základná škola Revúca” as the new and fifth / sixth partner school, which successfully passed the application process.

The process at ZŠ s MŠ Lipovce was initiated by Sylvia Smolková, a dedicated mathematics teacher at the school, which has a kindergarten, primary and secondary school.
Four trails were created for grades 5 (075303), 7 (025383), 8 (675400) and 9 (565437), which lead the school’s students across Lipovce and let them discover the community in a new way. Trying out the trails with the classes was a lot of fun for all involved and especially the experience of doing mathematics outside was a great motivational factor, as Sylvia Smolková told us.

At Základná škola in Revúca, the application was submitted by Michaela Štefko, who described her experience with MCM as follows:

“I work at the primary school in Hviezdoslavova street in Revúca. Our students are always open-minded to new and interesting forms of learning. As soon as we came across the application and the portal Mathcitymap, we immediately decided to use it in our lessons. So far, we have created two trails in the area of our school for the 5th and 6th grade. We are currently working on another one for the 7th grade. My colleague and I have recently started to design a mathematical walk in our town. We would like to present the monuments and significant places in our district town. Our students have already passed both routes, they were all excited, they formed groups very quickly and worked nicely on every single task. They even suggested that they take part in creating other tasks. We want to improve students´ reading comprehension, teamwork and also communication skills. Additionally, we see a great benefit in the fact that students, whose favourite school subject is not mathematics, took part in solving mathematical problems.”

The packages with the measuring tools and the official partner school plaque are already on their way to the schools and, as always, we are very much looking forward to receiving further applications from all over the world.

All further information about the partner school program and the prerequisites for the application can be found in the article about the first MCM partner school as well as on the homepage of our project MaSCE³.

40.000 MathCityMap-Tasks

Not even half a year has passed since we cracked the mark of 30,000 tasks in the MathCityMap system. Today, we are more than happy to announce the achievement of the next milestone. We are celebrating over 40,000 tasks in the web portal! Our users were also very active in the first half of 2022, […]

Not even half a year has passed since we cracked the mark of 30,000 tasks in the MathCityMap system. Today, we are more than happy to announce the achievement of the next milestone. We are celebrating over 40,000 tasks in the web portal! Our users were also very active in the first half of 2022, and today we have exactly 41,356 tasks in the portal.

Our anniversary task, which cracked the 40,000 mark, was created by Tobi Walter-Born in Berlin and asks for the area of the front of a goal wall. Click here to go to the task.

We look forward to many more MathCityMap tasks and we are excited to see when we will reach the next mark of 50,000 tasks!

MCM-Spring in Slovakia

Spring with warmer temperatures and sunshine has reached many parts of Europe. So it’s high time again to do mathematics outside and explore your surroundings with mathematical eyes. The steadily growing MCM community in Slovakia took this thought to heart in April and carried out a wide range of activities, which we would like to […]

Spring with warmer temperatures and sunshine has reached many parts of Europe. So it’s high time again to do mathematics outside and explore your surroundings with mathematical eyes. The steadily growing MCM community in Slovakia took this thought to heart in April and carried out a wide range of activities, which we would like to report on in more detail below.

It started on April 6, when the Student scientific conference, a joint scientific event of the Faculty of natural sciences and informatics (FNSaI) of the Constantine the Philosopher University (CPU) in Nitra, Slovakia and the Faculty of natural sciences of the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, took place. The graduated student Silvia Haringová won the section Professional didactics II with the paper: The importance of including math trails in teaching.

Veronika Bočková and Silvia Haringová, graduates of the Mathematics Department of the FNSaI CPU in Nitra, visited the lower secondary school in Nové Zámky on April 8, where they prepared a math trail for grade 5 students together with math teacher Elena Závodská. An open lesson for primary and lower secondary math teachers will also be held there, where all fifth graders will complete the trail.

On April 12, Silvia Haringová and Janka Medová went to Nemšová, where primary and lower secondary math teachers were trained in designing and implementing lessons with MathCityMap.

On April 14, a training workshop on MathCityMap paths for primary, secondary and university teachers was held at the Faculty of Science and Informatics in Nitra. Thirty teachers registered for the event. In the first block, teachers received the basic information about MathCityMap and became students again for a while when they tried a math trail themselves. In the second block, the teachers learned how to create the trails in the MathCityMap portal.

The EME 2022 conference – New challenges in mathematics education in primary school – was held in Liberec, Czech Republic on 21-23 April. At the conference, PhD students Silvia Haringová and Veronika Bočková presented the paper: Mathematical trails as a tool to stimulate teacher cooperation. They also created a trail on the campus of the Technical University for pre-service teachers and conference participants to experience.

At the end of the month, on April 26, a group of student teachers from the Physics Department of the University of Pilzen visited the University in Nitra. In the atrium of the Faculty of Science and Informatics and in the center of Nitra, they were introduced to the MCM system and were also able to try out a Mathtrail.

The coming months will also be interesting in Slovakia. The design and implementation of trails in the town of Bánovce nad Bebravou is already planned for May and mathtrails will also be created in Poland. In addition, the University in Nitra is working with mathematics teachers as part of the national project KEGA Cooperation, a project for the professional development of mathematics teachers, and aims to use Mathtrails and MathCityMap specifically for this purpose.

Task of the Week: Height of the Powder Tower in Merano

In the beautiful South Tyrolean city of Merano, teacher Michael Perkmann recently created the task “Height of the Powder Tower in Merano”, which we would like to present to you today as the task of the week. The goal of the task is to determine the height of the old powder tower. Michael Perkmann reports […]

In the beautiful South Tyrolean city of Merano, teacher Michael Perkmann recently created the task “Height of the Powder Tower in Merano”, which we would like to present to you today as the task of the week. The goal of the task is to determine the height of the old powder tower. Michael Perkmann reports about his task and the use of MathCityMap in the classroom in the following.

How did you come across the MathCityMap project? How do you use MCM?

I first heard about MathCityMap about 3 to 4 years ago at a teacher training course in South Tyrol. At that time we did the first Mathtrails in groups and tried to create our own tasks.

Since there are hardly any tasks and trails in South Tyrol and especially in Merano at the moment, I have always planned to create my own math parkour with my students one day.

I created this task for the Powder Tower together with my students from the Business School in Merano as part of an interdisciplinary project to get to know the MathCityMap platform better.
The goal is that the students themselves will soon create several tasks in the vicinity of Merano.

Together we will try to enter the tasks into the portal and then create a trail.

What can the learners gain by working on the tasks?

I think that working on tasks requires many competences of the students, especially modeling, creating text tasks, applying mathematical representations, creativity in solving mathematical problems.

This is often neglected in frontal teaching. MathCityMap is therefore a great addition to the lessons and the work outside the class motivates and makes fun for the students.

Trail of the month: Helsinki Tour

Through the Trail of the Month of May, we get to know a European capital from a slightly different angle. We’re talking about Finland’s largest city, Helsinki, where Nina Salminen, a local mathematics, chemistry and physics teacher, created the Helsinki Tour trail, which is available in the MCM app by using the code 129638 and […]

Through the Trail of the Month of May, we get to know a European capital from a slightly different angle. We’re talking about Finland’s largest city, Helsinki, where Nina Salminen, a local mathematics, chemistry and physics teacher, created the Helsinki Tour trail, which is available in the MCM app by using the code 129638 and on the MathCityMap web portal here.

On this extensive mathematical walking trail we get to know the city and its sights in connection with six mathematical tasks based on intermediate level topics. Starting at the Sibelius Monument, the trail covers a total distance of 2.9 km, passing the Olympic Stadium, the Parliament Building and the famous Temppeliaukio Church, which was carved directly into a rock.

In a short interview Nina Salminen tells us how she got to know MathCityMap and gives us some background information about her trail:

How did you come across the MathCityMap project?

My Italian colleague Giovanna Zito from Brindisi asked me to join an Erasmus+ project, where a MathCityMap trail is being planned with students in each of the five countries participating in the project. I found out about the MathCityMap project and made one trail with my students near our school, Munkkiniemi School. This spring we went further and planned two trails in the center of Helsinki.

Please describe your Mathtrail.

Along the trail you will see points of interest in Helsinki and at the same time solve short math problems. For each task, you will get to know one of Helsinki’s attractions. Thus, the route also serves as a tourist tour in our capital. Math problems are suitable not only for students but also for anyone who wants to recall the basics of mathematics or enjoy problem solving.

How do you use MCM and why?

MCM trail brings good variation for math lessons. A trip outside breaks up the monotony of the school day. Showing math in different contexts is also a good way to reach students who, for one reason or another, don’t like math and don’t think they’re good at it.

We can also get around the trails on theme days or when there are foreign guests at our school. The trail makes it easy to introduce our hometown. The Finnish mobility of the Erasmus+ project will take place in May and all 50 students from five different countries will take the MCM trail.

Describe your favorite task of the trail. How can it be solved and what can students learn from it?

My students have come up with ideas for the tasks and were so excited about planning them that I consider everyone a favorite. The tasks differ from each other and many of them require knowledge of geometry. In addition to connect math with real life, students get to know their hometown. They also learn to work together as a group when solving tasks and navigating from one task to another.

MCM Training in Ober-Ramstadt, Germany

At the beginning of April, a MathCityMap advanced training course was held in Ober-Ramstadt as part of a project day for the more than 30 students of the advanced mathematics courses at the Georg-Christoph Lichtenbergschool. The students first learned how to use MCM and then developed creative MCM tasks on the school campus for the […]

At the beginning of April, a MathCityMap advanced training course was held in Ober-Ramstadt as part of a project day for the more than 30 students of the advanced mathematics courses at the Georg-Christoph Lichtenbergschool.

The students first learned how to use MCM and then developed creative MCM tasks on the school campus for the lower and middle school. In total, the math teachers can now draw on about 50 new tasks and develop trails for their classes.

An overview of the different tasks created by the students* can be found in the trails sorted by grade level with codes 489376 for 5th/6th grade, 569374 for 7th/8th grade, and 199375 for 9th/10th grade.

The students were happy that they could create math tasks for current and future students in the spirit of sustainability. This project day showed that students can also create meaningful MCM tasks for the school community.

The project day was led by our team members Melanie Schubert and Rebecca Stäter and was carried out at the direct request of the Georg-Christoph Lichtenbergschool Ober-Ramstadt, whose teachers had already attended a MathCityMap training course in advance. If you would like to learn more about MathCityMap in the context of a teacher or student training, perhaps even directly at your school, please contact us at any time at info@mathcitymap.eu .

Portugal’s MathCityMap Partner School No. 3

Three is a charm! We are very happy to welcome the third Portuguese school in our partner school program. The “Escola Básica e Secundária Pintor José de Brito” has also successfully completed the application process and is now the fourth official MCM partner school. Two dedicated math teachers from the school created and tested the […]

Three is a charm! We are very happy to welcome the third Portuguese school in our partner school program. The “Escola Básica e Secundária Pintor José de Brito” has also successfully completed the application process and is now the fourth official MCM partner school.

Two dedicated math teachers from the school created and tested the three math trails required for the application here, and also wrote a short report on their experience with MCM so far, which you can read later in this article.

Again, the package with the measuring instruments and the official partner school plaque is on its way to the school and we are already very much looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

Two teachers (of Mathematics and Mathematics/ICT) working at Escola Básica e Secundária Pintor José de Brito (Viana do Castelo, Portugal), built and applied in partnership three trails; two of these were intended for 12th grade students, and the remaining one for 7th grade students. One of the 12th grade tracks was applied using the digital classroom. Two more trails are currently being prepared, one for 9th grade students and the other for 10th grade students, with a total of 27 tasks published on the school grounds.

The trail tasks were solved in groups of three/four students, who worked collaboratively, using the MathCityMap application on smartphones.

By applying these mathematical trails on the school grounds, we involve all students in active learning, working on the physical, cognitive and collaborative aspects. The different groups used creativity and different forms of mathematical representations in solving the tasks.

We provide students with a different learning experience from the usual one, in which assessment, reflection, critical mobilization of information with a view to solving tasks and strengthening self–esteem and well–being were present.

Students, who are usually less participative in the classroom, were involved in solving the tasks, collaborating with not only group colleagues but also 12th grade students who get involved in the tasks according to the way they perceive their importance for results in national exams.

They all claimed it to be an interesting activity, allowing them to experience mathematics in a different way. As for the fact that the trails allow gamification, the students got engaged with commitment in order to achieve maximum scores.

It is usual for students to question about the importance of mathematics and how it applies to real life. The execution of the mathematical trails on the school grounds allowed them to see the application of different mathematical concepts and procedures in the world around them.

Generic Tasks: Growth

This Generic Tasks article is about the wizard task from the “Growth” topic. As always with our Generic Tasks, the tasks can be created in no time with the help of the task wizard, and this time you can find the corresponding objects everywhere in your environment with even greater certainty than usual. The first […]

This Generic Tasks article is about the wizard task from the “Growth” topic. As always with our Generic Tasks, the tasks can be created in no time with the help of the task wizard, and this time you can find the corresponding objects everywhere in your environment with even greater certainty than usual. The first article on Generic Tasks, which also tells you how to get to the Task Wizard and what Generic Tasks are, can be found here.

The objects we are looking at in this article on growth are, of course, trees. Whether in the countryside or in the city, the next MCM task is never far away. The task that is stored in the task wizard is:

“Determine the age of this tree. A tree with a diameter of approximately 40cm (measured in 130cm height) is about 72 years old. One can assume that the diameter grows proportionally. Give the result in years.”

To create the task, we need the circumference of the tree at a height of approx. 130 cm and the type of tree, i.e. whether it is an oak, a maple or a sycamore, since different trees naturally grow at different rates. The task can then be solved via the fact that the growth takes place almost linearly, so we can determine the growth of the tree per year via proportionality.

The next article on the issue of Generic Taks will deal with the topic of velocities, for which we will take a closer look at the escalator. Until then, have fun and save time when creating MCM tasks with the Task Wizard!