LARGE MCM UPDATE (APP & WEB PORTAL)!

Dear MCM-Users! 

Greetings from the MathCityMap-Developer-Team! Thanks for using MathCityMap, for your continuous support and assistance in improving the system with your contact requests, feedback and experience. The latter has lead us to a rather large cumulative update of the MathCityMap app and web portal. First things first: PLEASE UPDATE YOUR MATHCITYMAP-APP! – if not already (automatically) done. We want to give you a brief overview of the new changes so that your prepared before your next MathCityMap-Session!

1. New Map Experience: Times are changing. ‚Till now we implemented a way of using maps for navigation that allowed to download a trail once and use it without internet connection henceforth (even upon app restart). But in times where students and in the best case schools, as well, can provide a stable internet connection and sufficient data volume, we adjust and draw from the benefits! Maps will now be freshly fetched everytime you start/continue a trail, which means that at least at the trail start an internet connection is required! But we promise you – the new map handling also comes with a fresh, more fluent and better looking map experience! Should you have only limited internet structure or possibilities at your school, the trail can still be used with the „old“ map handling – which requires you to actively change the required setting for this specific trail in the web portal. 
2. Content Gallery: Did you know that playgrounds are often a playground for architects – which in turn leads to a colorful variety of mathematical tasks in the everyday life of your students! How colorful, you ask? Well we didn’t know either until we browsed through our new Content Gallery for the first time! It is the joined effort of teachers, MathCityMap-experts and us developers that brought together a collection of the best, most creative and diverse public MathCityMap tasks – a source of inspiration, so to speak! There is more to explore about a tree but it’s age 😀
3. QR Code Image Upload: The test phase for the qr code image upload concerning the task title image can be called successful. Thus, we expanded this feature to the trail image, task sample solution and task hints and to the task and trail editing views. We hope this speeds up your process and elevates your Student Account usage. Speaking of which…
4. Student Task Publication: Many contacted us being confused about not being able to publish trails with student task or rather not being able to complete these tasks in a way that a publication (review request) would be possible. That was clearly unintended and therefore high up on our todo list. It is now possible for teachers to edit any task in their learning group and to submit a trail with student tasks after all criteria were met. Note that you as teacher (for now) will not get any notification about any review feedback. Each student can see these notifications when entering the web portal via their student account. Yet, you as teacher are still able to look into each review message. We will continue improving this usage scenario but we hope this first adjustment resolves a lot of uncertainty.

There were of course many other small and larger improvements, which however will not impact your MathCityMap usage drastically (little styling, bugs, performance, maintenance, etc.) which is why they are not mentioned here. Yet, since many things were changed at the same time, problems might still occur from time to time. Should you encounter such, please write us detailled and with screenshots at info[at]mathcitymap.eu! Your feedback is precious and led to these improvements! Keep equipping your students with the MathCityMap math goggles and enjoy being outdoors!

With best regards,
your MathCityMap-Development-Team 😀