Trail of the Month: La ruta Azteca

Our new trails of the month were located in Mexico. The trails “BUAP 2” and “La ruta Azteca” were created exactly one year ago when the MathCityMap team visited Mexico for the first time. Simone Jablonski, member of the MathCityMap team Frankfurt, answered us some questions about the trails.

Why did you create those math trails? Are there special attributes of those trails?

The trail “BUAP 2” was created for a teacher training with more than 75 Mexican teachers during the TEMBI V conference at University Puebla. Our aim was to give the participants a broad insight into the possibilities of MathCityMap, so we included different geometric topics like calculation on areas, slope of a ramp and height of buildings.

The trail “La ruta Azteca” was created on a free day which we used to visit the historical Aztecs pyramids in Teotihuacán. The pyramids offer great opportunity for calculations of their area and of the slopes of their steep staircases. Especially for tourists and families, this trail offers a great opportunity to combine mathematics and historical objects.

Particularly pleasing is the fact that we were able to create the trails in Spanish. A great help was the translation of the wizard tasks by our Spanish MoMaTrE project partners. It simplifies the use of MathCityMap – especially in an international context – immensely.

Do you have any other commentary on MathCityMap?

I have worked with MathCityMap since 2017 and mostly used it from the author’s perspective. It is great how the math trails motivate students and teachers to do mathematics. Sometimes I get the chance to run a math trail myself and after the first reward with points, I can fully share this motivation!