Author: Isabella Gogesch

Congratulations, MathCityMap community!

We’ve reached a major milestone: the MathCityMap portal now includes an incredible 100,000 math problems from around the world!

Each task is proof of how math is out there in the real world: whether calculating surfaces in the city, finding angles on statues or determining opening hours at the playground. MathCityMap makes it possible to experience and understand mathematics in a practical way.

We would like to present a few tasks from recent years here:

From 2019: Europe-Fountain (Code: 148310) for year 8

There is a fountain with a figure of Europe on the market square. The pedestal on which the figure is enthroned forms a regular polygon. How many degrees does each of the interior angles of this regular polygon have?

From 2020: Places of Interest (Code: 7817388) for year 7

On this information board is a map with a grid and blue and yellow spots representing different places of interest. What percentage of these spots are in the two squares of the map where the church is shown?

From the year 2021: Stairs (Code: 1324003) for year

How many ways are there to walk up the stairs if you can take one or two steps per step? The step sequences can be combined.

From the year 2022: Playing in August (Code: 4847292) for year 5

This information board shows the opening hours of the playground. These change throughout the year. How many hours a day is the playground open longer in August than in November?

From the year 2023: Poster (Code: 1975801) for year 7

What is the maximum number of posters that can be hung in the area marked in blue if a poster measures 65 cm x 65 cm? The posters must not overlap.

From the year 2024: The U in Art (Code: 5685281) for year 10

The sculpture “Blickwechsel” is located on the climate art trail on Eckweg. Determine the volume of the letter “U”. Enter the volume in cubic centimeters as an integer.

Without the support of our dedicated community, reaching this milestone would not have been possible. Teachers, students, math enthusiasts and many others have enriched the portal with their ideas. Every single task contributes to making mathematics more accessible, exciting and understandable for everyone.

Continue to share your ideas, create tasks in your city and join us in bringing math to life.

The trail with the most downloads in the last month (214 in total) comes from Semarang, Indonesia. The “HGN SISWA TRAIL C 2024” (trail code: 0123801) was created as part of the National Teachers’ Day in the city of Semarang. The city’s education office would like to celebrate this day with a maths competition, among other things, for which this trail forms the basis. The activities all took place at Semarang Zoo. Primary school teachers and primary school pupils took part in the trail.

Semarang Zoo is a zoo attraction in the city of Semarang in Central Java. This tourist destination can be an option for a walk with the family. Semarang Zoo is located on the north coast. It is easy to reach as it is located right in front of the Mangkang Terminal.

In addition to rides for children, such as water rides, and electric motorbike hire, there is also an elephant statue monument, which is also used for maths.

We are delighted to see such a great and intensive exploration of the local environment and mathematical aspects and are very excited to see what other interesting trails there will be in the future.

The following pictures give an insight into the places where the trail is located:

Dear MathCityMap community,

Another year full of new tasks, trails and users is coming to an end. We appreciate every new member in our community and look forward to every new addition. We are particularly proud to have introduced important innovations such as student accounts and a more user-friendly operation in our portal this year. In addition to the numerous inspiring training courses and workshops that we organised, we were also present at several trade fairs and were able to get many people excited about our system.

This year, we would also like to look back on the last few months.

• This year, the community has grown by almost 16,000 users and we are delighted to welcome all new members. This means that the MCM community now has over 40,000 users and has almost doubled in size in the last year.
• We have almost cracked the 100,000 tasks mark, of which around 23,000 have been published!
• A total of 4663 maths trails were downloaded in 2024. In addition, 2043 digital classrooms were held with a total of approximately 15862 participants and 961 badges were awarded to MCM authors.
• Many new features have already been implemented as part of our Erasmus+ project MATRIX (Math Trails with an Inclusive Perspective on Students Experiences). For example, it is now possible to create student accounts (there are already 3440 student accounts), progress tracking when creating tasks has been made easier and images can now be uploaded to the task form on the PC from a mobile phone using a QR code.
• Of course, MCM was not to be missed at international events. For example, we and our partners were able to present the system and its latest developments in Sydney, Australia and Bari, Italy. There were also numerous training courses and activities that brought MathCityMap closer to researchers, teachers and students.
• The partner school programme launched as part of the MaSCE³ project was also further expanded. There are now 53 official MathCityMap partner schools in a total of 10 countries that have successfully completed the application process and we are already looking forward to receiving many more applications from all over the world.

We are overjoyed with the impressive progress of MathCityMap and the wonderful collaboration with our partner schools and the dedicated community. Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm in discovering maths with us in new ways and sharing this knowledge. Together, we are able to open up a different perspective on maths for many learners and bring about positive change step by step. Without our fantastic users, none of this would be possible – so a big thank you to you all!

We wish you and your families happy holidays, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2024. We look forward to discovering new and exciting challenges around the world with you and many new members in 2024.

Your MathCityMap team

We are very pleased to welcome the secondary school IES Plurilingüe Castro da Uz in As Pontes as a new MathCityMap partner school. The teacher María Trastoy Rego already had positive experiences with math trails a few years ago and therefore decided to use MathCityMap with her students as well. As a result, there are already several trails on the school grounds and in the surrounding area.

We would like to introduce you to a few of these trails here:

The first two trails at the school were created for the ninth grade and differ in their difficulty:

IES Castro da Uz (code: 2712903)

IES Castro da Uz* (code: 0115145)

The “Senda 203 A” trail (code: 2815128) leads along a hiking trail that passes places of significance for the city.

The school’s mathematics department has also worked on an inter-school program and created the trails “Parque infantil da Fraga” (code: 5619690) and “Parque matemático” (code: 7913049) for the schools in the area.

“In the future, we would also like to have trails created by the students and continue working with other schools to highlight the architectural and cultural heritage of our city.”

We look forward to more exciting trails and great new ideas.

The package with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments has already been delivered and we are looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

All further information on the partner school programme and the requirements for application can be found both in the article on the first MCM partner school and on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.

We are happy to welcome the primary school in Petrovice as a new MathCityMap partner school. The math teacher Anna Bejšovcová created three interesting trails for the third and fourth grade together with the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra and has already tested them with the children.

The trails mainly focus on addition, multiplication and length measurement and can be found with the following codes:

ZŠ Petrovice 3. ročník (Code: 3523307)

ZŠ Petrovice 4. ročník (Code 3423308)

ZŠ Petrovice – areál (Code: 7823343)

„The children had a lot of fun with the measuring and also with the fact that we have 107 coat hangers but only 50 pupils. The pupils really enjoyed the maths trails. They were enthusiastic and are looking forward to trying the other challenges.“

The package with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments has already been delivered and we are looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

All further information on the partner school programme and the requirements for application can be found both in the article on the first MCM partner school and on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.

From September 20 to 21, 2024, the ISTRON conference took place in Frankfurt at Goethe University for the first time. As part of this conference, we organized a training day for mathematics teachers on the topic of mathematical modelling and sustainability.

The participating teachers were able to listen to interesting lectures and take part in exciting workshops. The lecturers came from various universities in Germany and Austria, such as the two keynote speakers Prof. Dr. Katrin Vorhölter from the Technical University of Braunschweig and Prof. Dr. Martin Bracke from the University of Koblenz.

During the lunch break, a MathCityMap Challenge took place, which led over the beautiful Westend Campus.

This training day was sponsored by CASIO as well as MathCityMap.

We were very pleased about the great interest in the training day and are looking forward to the next ISTRON conference!

Dear MathCityMap community,

We are incredibly excited to share this special milestone with you. There are now over 36,000 users and 90,000 tasks worldwide. We would like to present a few of the most exciting new tasks to you here and perhaps give you some new inspiration for your own tasks:

How big is the difference in centimetres between the shallowest and deepest depth indicated at this bathing spot?

Task: Small cubes (Code: 1796716 ) for grade 7

There are lots of colorful cubes hanging under the staff room. Calculate what percentage of the cubes are green. Enter the percentage (without the percentage sign, rounded to whole percentages).

We are looking forward to many more great MathCityMap years and the next good 90,000 tasks!

Your MathCityMap team 🙂

We are delighted to welcome Romania’s first partner school. The maths teacher Mihaela Hadar from the German-speaking Brukenthal-Gymnasium in Sibiu (Hermannstadt) has created three exciting trails for the fifth, sixth and seventh grades around the school and has already had great experiences with the students.

The trails not only provide a mathematical experience of the 2007 UNESCO World Heritage city, but also an insight into its history. The first trail for year five, “Maths and history: around Brukenthal” (code: 5622179), focuses primarily on understanding numbers. The second trail for the sixth grade, “Maths & Bruk” (code: 1921999), is primarily about symmetries and the third trail for the seventh grade, “Maths with a difference” (code: 5822001), involves calculating areas in the immediate vicinity.

“I think MathCityMap is very good, as it allows math to be practiced in everyday life. The students had a lot of fun and wanted to use MathCityMap more often in the future.”

Below are a few insights into the tasks and how to solve them:

The package with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments has already been delivered and we are looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

All further information on the partner school programme and the requirements for application can be found both in the article on the first MCM partner school and on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.

We are very pleased to welcome the technical high school for economics, graphics and communication from Brixen (Italy) as a new MathCityMap partner school. Two exciting trails have been created by both teachers and students, which are being used by many classes with great pleasure.

“The “MathCityMap” concept was presented and tested at a training event in South Tyrol. Teachers from our school also took part and immediately liked this way of teaching pupils mathematics outdoors, using concrete objects. Our first trail was created by Prof. Grünfelder and was immediately put to good use by the specialist group. The students were enthusiastic and clearly enjoyed measuring, trying out and discussing. A second trail was therefore developed, this time together with pupils in a cross-class project. Based on their experience with MathCityMap trails, the pupils came up with suitable tasks on objects in and around Brixen Cathedral Square. After the trail was published, the group of pupils took on the task of accompanying various classes from our school as they tried out the trail.”

The two trails have already been downloaded a total of 336 times and can be found under the following codes:

Math at Brixen Cathedral Square (code: 061583)

Math at Millander village square (code: 68678)

The package with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments has already been delivered and we are looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

All further information on the partner school programme and the requirements for application can be found both in the article on the first MCM partner school and on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.

We are delighted to welcome two new partner schools in Slovakia. Palárikovo Primary School and Mirka Nešpora Primary School have each created three trails – for the fifth, sixth and seventh grades.

Teacher Ľubica Pereiová told us in a short report how she got started with MathCityMap:

“We organised maths parcours in our school. We started with maths trails in the classrooms. Then we tried to do maths trails outside. We created 20 tasks around the school. We will continue with the maths trails. The pupils enjoyed working with the app. They repeated what they had learnt on the trails during the year. “

The trails can be found here: 2919596, 2520835, 4620836.

Teacher Michaela Pukáčová also told us about her experience with MathCityMap so far:

“The first trail entitled “Fractions at Mirka Nešpora Primary School – Interior” (code: 2817928) includes 7 tasks located in the interior of our school. The second “End-of-the-year trail 6” (code: 2321731) and the third “End-of-the-year trail 7” (code: 0421732) focus on summarising the curriculum for the 6th and 7th grades and allow students to apply their acquired knowledge in practice. More than 70 students from the 6th and 7th grades participated in these mathematical trails. The pupils enjoyed this unusual lesson, they had fun and improved their mathematical knowledge in practical situations. These trails brought a new dynamic to the lessons and helped the pupils to better understand and appreciate the importance of maths in everyday life.”

Below you can gain an insight into the special MathCityMap lessons at the two schools:

We are also very much looking forward to more exciting trails and tasks!

The packages with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments are already on their way to the schools and we are already looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

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