Category: General

Silvia Haringova of the Constantine the Philosopher university in Nitra presented the MathCityMap@home concept in online teacher trainings for around 700 teachers. Furthermore, she conducted lessons with more than 150 lower- and upper-secondary school students. In the interview, Silvia looks back on her student time and describes the teacher training concept.

Looking back on student time: Participating in a course about MathCityMap

During the Intensive study programme (ISP) organized within the MoMaTrE project, which I participated in March 2018 at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt, I was taught everything necessary to create and implement my own trails in Slovakia.

Based on my participation in the ISP I chose a diploma thesis aiming at math trails. I describe the principles and specifics of the designing tasks for MathCityMap and my goal is also to create several math trails. I also deal with trails within the project Comenius Institute, an annual educational programme designed for pre-service, beginning and in-service teachers as well as heads of schools organized by the non-governmental non-profit organization Živica. Each year, 20 teachers have the opportunity to participate in this programme. The main goal of my project is to increase awareness of math trails in primary and secondary schools among various teaching communities throughout whole Slovakia.

Being a lecturer: Disseminating the MCM@home concept

With the project, I tried to motivate my classmates at the university and involve them in the design and implementation of math trails. I created a Facebook page (click here), where I regularly publish various articles trying to promote this new way of teaching mathematics outdoors using mobile technologies. In cooperation with the Comenius Institute, we organized a webinar about trails. The webinar was held online and was attended by more than 700 teachers of various subjects. During the students’ practice, I conducted 9 [MCM@home] trails with more than 150 lower- and upper-secondary school pupils.

A list with several MCM@home trails from all over the world can be found here:

Collection of MCM@home Trails

Norbert Goeth participated in our MathCityMap training series in cooperation with the Hessian Ministry of Education. In the interview, the teacher tells us about the use of MathCityMap for exam preparation.

Where do you personally see the added value of MCM@home?
I see the added value in the successive streamlining of the collection of the previous year’s ZAA tasks, if these are provided with a schedule with the possibility of control. At the beginning of the year, the STARK booklets (containing the final exams of the last years) are purchased – and initially disappear unread. Beginning in late summer, teachers point out the need for these preparations (in addition to normal instruction), but the response is hesitant and restrained. I think the MCM@home paths for these assignments are a great way to give teachers a tool to easily see which students are working on the assignments, where they are struggling, and where you need to increase the pressure on solution commitment.

What did your learners report back to you?
I told my class 10 about my training and the tool. Yes, the idea is well received and depending on their learning attitude, they have emphasized more the supporting or controlling options in their assessment.

What MCM@home digital learning paths have you created yourself?
ZAA tasks from the years that will not be printed by STARK publisher in the current books in the future (ZAA-2012-RS and ZAA-2013-RS, each mandatory tasks), currently I am dealing with the elective tasks.

Searching for more information?
An overview of all MCM@home learning paths can be found here.

How did the creation of your trails work out?
Pretty well. The program is largely self-explanatory, though the pitfalls are always in the details. Overall, creating tasks, if you want to do it well, is time-consuming. But that’s where MCM is no different than anything else, because the effort isn’t on MCM.

Dear users,

in the last year, a large number of MCM@home trails have been created. Students can work on these digital learning paths from home or in distance learning phases.

All your learners have to do is to enter the code in the free and GPDR-compliant MathCityMap app. Ready to start!

We hope you enjoy working through them!

Did you also create a MCM@home learning path and would like to share it with other users? Great!

Then please write an email with…

• the name of your MCM@home trail,
• the related code,
• the grade level,
• and the language of the digital learning path

to barlovits[at]math.uni-frankfurt.de.

We would be very happy to add your contribution to the list as well!