Popular Mathtrails: Bern Oldtown

The fact that creating mathtrails is sustainable is proven by the mathtrail “Berner Altstadt” (Bern Oldtown), which with 99 downloads is one of the most downloaded trails of the past weeks and thus fits perfectly into our category “Popular Mathtrails”. Already created two years ago, it has now been revived by teacher Damaris Burri, who told us in a short interview how it came about and what new activities she is planning with MathCityMap.

How did it happen that the trail was downloaded so often?

The mathtrail “Berner Altstadt” was created as part of my master thesis. In the meantime, I have been working at the school in Grindelwald for a year and since this August I have been the class teacher of the 7th class B. Last month we visited the BAM ( Career and Education Fair) in Bern, together with the parallel class and the 8th grade. As a school class, we were assigned a time slot. For us it was the afternoon. It takes 2 hours by train from Grindelwald to Bern, so we wanted to spend the whole day in Bern. This was ideal to try out my mathtrail with a class. The other two class teachers thought this was a great idea. So we visited the Mathtrail “Berner Altstadt” with 58 students.

In addition, it may well be that other schools used the BAM, which lasted a whole week, as an occasion for a trail visit.

What will you work on next with MathCityMap?

In the last two years I have not done much with MathCityMap. A little more than a year ago I revised my 1st private trail “Von Roll Areal” so that it can be published. After that there was a break until now. After the fall vacations I will start a trail for Grindelwald with the students in the gifted program. This should be for 5 – 6th grade. The children are already excited about the project.