Category: General

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.

Last month, the trail with the most downloads came from the Ceibal mathematics department (Ceibal is a Uruguayan initiative to implement the “one laptop per child” model for the introduction of information and communication technologies in primary and secondary schools1) in Uruguay. The trail is called “Problemas STEAM geolocalizados” and can be found under the following code 4520262. Those responsible, Analí da Silva and Verónica Campanella, told us how the trail came about and what is behind it:

“The idea for this trail emerged as a collaboration between two members of the educators’ team aiming to integrate STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) concepts into outdoor learning environments. We aimed to create an interactive and engaging experience that would challenge students to apply their mathematical skills in real-world contexts.
To develop the trail, we carefully selected locations within our community that offered interesting geometric features, architectural elements, or natural phenomena suitable for posing mathematical problems. We then designed a series of challenges and activities that required students to use mathematical reasoning and problem-solving strategies to complete.
Throughout the development process, we collaborated with local experts in various fields, including mathematics, architecture, and environmental science, to ensure the accuracy and educational value of the trail.”

We are very happy about such a great and intensive engagement with the local environment and mathematical aspects and are already 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 tasks are located:

The Pavol Demitru Primary School and Kindergarten (Základná škola s materskou školou Pavla Demitru) is our newest and twelfth partner school in Slovakia. We are very pleased to welcome them and look forward to working with them.

The teacher Kristína Čierniková has created two exciting trails in cooperation with the University of Constantine the Philosopher. The first trail “Námestie Matice slovenskej” (Code:  1620472) (translated: Square of the Slovak Matrix) contains 10 tasks that were created at the Square of the Slovak Matrix in the Trenčín region.

The second trail “Po stopách histórie mesta Dubnica nad Váhom” (Code: 3620281) (translated: On the traces of the history of Dubnica nad Váhom) allows you to explore many historical monuments of the town of Dubnica nad Váhom in a mathematical way.

The Math Trails were carried out with over 40 5th, 8th and 9th grade students. The children had a lot of fun and the following photographs provide an insight into the lessons:

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.