MoMaTrE workshops in Nitra

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.