teacher training – MathCityMap

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 .

In 2014 MathCityMap was introduced to Indonesia with a pilot study conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt in collaboration with Universitas Negeri Semarang involving several schools in the city of Semarang. Just three years afterwards in 2017, the Mobile Math Trails Research Group was established to become a center for the study of math trails with digital technology in Indonesia. Since then MOOCs are offered and teacher trainings are organized in collaboration with teacher organizations and the Education Offices in several cities. At some universities, MathCityMap is part of the courses taught to prospective mathematics teachers and is a topic investigated in several theses.

At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology invited the Mobile Math Trail Research Group to collaborate in organizing a teacher training on strengthening literacy and numeracy skills using MathCityMap. The speaker in the training was Professor Matthias Ludwig as the founder of MathCityMap who explained the MathCityMap concept, and the technical details of the webportal and the app in collaboration with Dr Adi Nur Cahyono, the coordinator of MathCityMap in Indonesia, and his team.

Participants in this training were 240 teachers from 34 provinces in Indonesia. Primary and secondary school teachers who were selected from 6500 applicants to the teacher training. The training was conducted in four stages and each stage was carried out in 4 days in Jakarta and Bandung. The training was realized with offline sessions which consisted of an indoor theory lesson and an outdoor practice in the famous city parks in the two cities, namely the Bogor Botanical Gardens, Jakarta Old Town, Banteng Field, Kencana Park.

As a follow-up, the trainees returned to their respective areas and held multiplier trainings for their colleagues. They also created a mathtrail in their area with the local cultural context and implement it with students and the public. Communication with the teachers is maintained to discuss and share implementation experiences through the MathCityMap Indonesia Community forum.

MathCityMap trails and users in Indonesia have increased significantly and continue to grow as a positive impact of dissemination through MOOCs, lectures at teacher education institutes, teacher trainings and communities. In 2022, the Directorate General of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia will provide training on numeracy and literacy skills using MathCityMap for 22,000 university students who will undertake internships in schools throughout Indonesia.

Collaboration as a means of professional growth for mathematics teachers

Recently in Slovakia Mathtrails with MathCityMap were used in a professional development event for mathematics teachers, especially as an impulse for collaboration in joint development of mathematics education within the national KEGA project “Collaboration as a means for professional development of mathematics teachers”. Janka Medová and Silvia Haringová from the Department of Mathematics at the University “Constantine the Philosopher” in Nitra and teachers from the United Catholic School in Nitra participated in the design of the mathematical trails.

During the first meeting, the teachers put themselves in the role of students. With the help of mobile devices, they tried to master the prepared mathtrail. After they had solved all the tasks, we explained to them how the MathCityMap portal works and how a mathtrail can be created. Furthermore, the teachers received a manual with detailed instructions on how to create a trail. The teachers’ task was now to come up with their own tasks and to upload them to the portal by the next meeting.

At our next meeting, the teachers discussed the tasks together and selected the best ones to create the final Mathtrail. This trail was tested out by high school students who spent two class periods walking the trail and solving tasks. Following the walk-through of the mathtrail, a joint teacher reflection took place, focusing on the importance of incorporating mathtrails into the teaching of mathematics.

From September 9 to October 8, we were able to collaborate with Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada on a new project on outdoor mathematics and MathCityMap. Visiting the research group of Prof. Dr. Nathalie Sinclair, we dedicated ourselves to research on embodiment and gestures while walking a mathtrail: When students work on real objects, it seems natural that they interact with the object and describe mathematical concepts through gestures.

We started by looking at the SFU campus, and we didn’t have to search long for suitable tasks! Not only the pyramid seemed to be made for MCM! In the course of an advanced training with 20 teachers, the tasks could then be tested directly. Afterwards, five groups were filmed solving the tasks. In the evaluation, we will focus on when and with which function different gestures were used. We will submit these results at the next PME conference (2022 in Valencia).

Of course, we did not miss the opportunity to create some trails in downtown Vancouver – both the Waterfront Station and the Stanley Park were ideal addresses for our first “Canadian Math Trails”.

The study and the accompanying research stay are funded by the DAAD and the BMBF within the framework of the Project-related Exchange of Persons (PPP) Canada.

The MathCityMap Team Spain is offering training for teachers on mathematical walking paths with MathCityMap. The training will start on the second of October with a face-to-face session in four different cities – Gijón, Guareña (Extremadura), Jaén and Santander. The rest of this training will be held online. The necessary information to register can be found on the poster in this post. The MCM Team Spain looks forward to your participation.

The MathCityMap Team Portugal is offering training for teachers on mathematical walking paths with MathCityMap on October 16 and November 3. The necessary information to register can be found on the poster in this post. The MCM Team Portugal looks forward to your participation.

MoMaTrE (Mobile Math Trails in Europe) – this is the name of the european project to spread technology supported math trails in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and Slovakia. From 6th until 9th of November Moritz Baumann and Iwan Gurjanow (both Goethe University) visited Nitra (Slovakia) and carried out several workshops in collaboration with Sona Ceretkova (Professor for mathematics education at the university Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre) with the focus on outdoor modelling with MathCityMap.

Workshops

The workshop preparations took place on Tuesday afternoon. In this context we created a math trail that contains ten tasks, that the participants of the workshops should complete. Amongst other things, the current task of the week is part of the trail. The area around the university as well as the beautiful old town of Nitra have been inspected and suitable objects were photographed and measured.

On Wednesday and Thursday morning two sessions of 90 minutes each for teacher students took place. The future teachers could gain insights into the theory of education outside the classroom, the theory of math trails as well as mathematical modelling. However, the participants had the most fun with the practical part in which they had to complete the math trail (see series of pictures). During the math trail, the new digital classroom feature could be successfully tested. The second session focused on creating a math trail with the use of MathCityMap. The participants showed great interest in the project and participated actively in the work phases. For us, the practical phases of a workshop are very important. They allow future teachers to get in touch with the new technology and to reduce fears to use digital media in classroom. Hopefully, this contributes to an increased use of digital media and in this context of MathCityMap in the real mathematics classroom in the future.

On Wednesday afternoon, teacher students of the primary school listened to a lecture about math trails and modelling. The lecture was held in English and translated simultaniously into Slovakish (see impressions in the lecture hall). It was the first time that students were able to attend an international lecture and certainly aroused interest, for example in participating in the Intensive Program for Mathtrails at the Goethe University in March 2019. The exchange between students and lecturers from the participating European countries is one of the goals of the Erasmus + project.

The travel was concluded by a 3 hours workshop for in-service teachers of mathematics in Nitra. The session was structured in a similiar way as described above and offered the participants to get in touch with new possibilities of integrating smartphones in their mathematics classroom.

Conclusion

Overall, we consider the meeting in Nitra a great success for the European project. The events was tightly clocked and could all be successfully completed. The cooperation and the exchange with the Slovak lecturers was furthermore informative for us. We were able to enjoy a great hospitality, get to know the beautiful city in the short spare time in an authentic way and learn about the Slovak education system. The next MoMaTrE project meeting will take place in Nitra too and we look forward to it!

Impressions

The following pictures show impressions of the city and our workshops.

On 24.05.2018, Martin Lipinski and Simone Jablonski presented the MathCityMap system und project during a teacher training at Campus Westend at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The event’s title “It’s time to go outside” was taken literally, so that the participants were able to test “outdoor mathematics” with help of the app.

The trail showed not only the different mathematic opportunities with MathCityMap, but also led through interesting objects on the campus, such as the Body of Knowledge or Adorno’s memorial.

The tasks included combinatorics, cryptographic and geometric questions, as well as GPS tasks. For example, it was asked to find the point which has the same distance to each of the marked points. On the paper, it is quite easy to construate the circumcenter of the triangle, but in reality, it is a special challenge.

The feedback made clear: The participants had a lot of fun while solving the tasks and own ideas how to use MCM with their students. We are looking forward to first reports!

Doing outdoor mathmatics with MathCityMap works in any weather. Iwan Gurjanow and Matthias Ludwig visited the cathedral city Erfurt on Wednesday 21.03. and Thursday 22.03. On the 24th Days of the maths and science lessens of the ThiLLM, we were able to present MathCityMap. While the preparations on Wednesday took place in cold but sunny weather, there were some brave teachers who ignored the sleet and solved MCM tasks at the campus of the University of Erfurt and later created own MCM tasks in the portal. Of course, in such a beautiful city, we were also searching for tasks in the city center. The finished trail in Erfurt’s old town will be presented here in the next few days.

On 01.12.2017, Matthias Ludwig and Simone Jablonski presented MathCityMap as part of an internal teacher training at the Commercial Schools in Hanau. First, the theoretical basis for math trails, the MCM concept and selected research results were presented. Afterwards, the participants got to know the app with the aid of a trail created around the schoolyard – consisting of a variety of geometrical, functional and combinatorial problems. Using the criteria for good MCM tasks, the participants then became active themselves after a change in perspective and sighted the schoolyard for possible tasks. In the process, a variety of ideas for MCM on the level of secondary school appeared. As an end product of the events, the participants could create their own tasks in the portal and combine them into a trail around the school. Of course, there was a lot of fun during the event, for example while answering the question of the height of the swing seat in a 45° angle:

MCM flying high

We thank the participants for their cooperation and feedback and look forward to numerous MCM tasks in Hanau.

Are you also interested in a MCM teacher training? Feel free to contact us!

Tag: teacher training

MCM Training in Ober-Ramstadt, Germany

MathCityMap: News from Indonesia

MathCityMap: News from Slovakia

MCM goes Canada

MaSCE³ – Teacher training Spain

MaSCE³ – Teacher training

MoMaTrE workshops in Nitra

Workshops

Conclusion

Impressions

It’s time to go outside!

MCM in Erfurt

MCM in Hanau