MathCityMap: News from Indonesia

In 2014 MathCityMap was introduced to Indonesia with a pilot study conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt in collaboration with Universitas Negeri Semarang involving several schools in the city of Semarang. Just three years afterwards in 2017, the Mobile Math Trails Research Group was established to become a center for the study of math trails with digital technology in Indonesia. Since then MOOCs are offered and teacher trainings are organized in collaboration with teacher organizations and the Education Offices in several cities. At some universities, MathCityMap is part of the courses taught to prospective mathematics teachers and is a topic investigated in several theses.

At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology invited the Mobile Math Trail Research Group to collaborate in organizing a teacher training on strengthening literacy and numeracy skills using MathCityMap. The speaker in the training was Professor Matthias Ludwig as the founder of MathCityMap who explained the MathCityMap concept, and the technical details of the webportal and the app in collaboration with Dr Adi Nur Cahyono, the coordinator of MathCityMap in Indonesia, and his team.

Participants in this training were 240 teachers from 34 provinces in Indonesia. Primary and secondary school teachers who were selected from 6500 applicants to the teacher training. The training was conducted in four stages and each stage was carried out in 4 days in Jakarta and Bandung. The training was realized with offline sessions which consisted of  an indoor theory lesson and an outdoor practice in the famous city parks in the two cities, namely the Bogor Botanical Gardens, Jakarta Old Town, Banteng Field, Kencana Park.

As a follow-up, the trainees returned to their respective areas and held multiplier trainings for their colleagues. They also created a mathtrail in their area with the local cultural context and implement it with students and the public. Communication with the teachers is maintained to discuss and share implementation experiences through the MathCityMap Indonesia Community forum.

MathCityMap trails and users in Indonesia have increased significantly and continue to grow as a positive impact of dissemination through MOOCs, lectures at teacher education institutes, teacher trainings and communities. In 2022, the Directorate General of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia will provide training on numeracy and literacy skills using MathCityMap for 22,000 university students who will undertake internships in schools throughout Indonesia.