Trail of the month: Math Trail di Fort Rotterdam Macassar

The Mathtrail of the month February comes from Indonesia, more precisely from the city of Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. Here, teacher Jamaluddin Tahuddin created the trail “Math Trail di Fort Rotterdam Makassar” a special math trail that leads through the historic fort of the city of Makassar with a total of six tasks. The trail can be accessed on the web portal and in the app under the code 157539.

You can find a short interview with the creator of the trail below. Have fun reading it!

How did you come across the MathCityMap project?

Every year, students go on a study tour in Fort Rotterdam. They work on a project assignment to make a report given by the Indonesian teacher. After attending training on how to strengthen numeracy skills through the MathCityMap application, I was interested in making a Math Trail in Fort Rotterdam. In addition to doing historical tours, students will also be able to do numeracy activities at Fort Rotterdam. Thus, this activity can involve many subjects, including Mathematics, Indonesian, English, History, and Science.

Please describe your Mathtrail.

Fort Rotterdam is one of the historical places in the city of Makassar. Everyone including students in Makassar know this place. So far, they have only seen Fort Rotterdam from a historical perspective. But now they will also be able to look at Fort Rotterdam from a numeracy point of view. Inside the fort, I’ve selected several objects that can serve as numeric contexts. So that people who visit Fort Rotterdam will not only do historical tours, but can also do numeracy tours.

How do you use MCM and why?

Students can use the MathCityMap application for activities to practice numeracy skills outside the classroom.
Students are organized into several groups and each group consists of 3-4 students. Each group only needs 1 smartphone so that all students can be involved even though not all have smartphones. The slow speed internet connection is also not a problem because every math trail that students will complete can be downloaded first so that it can be used offline. Teachers can also know how students solve each of the numeracy problems through a worksheet which can be downloaded through the MCM application.

Describe your favorite task of the trail. How can it be solved?

My favorite trail task is “Gerbang Gereja“ on the Math Trail in Fort Rotterdam City of Makassar. In addition to its unique shape, at the Church Gate students can also learn from the context of numeracy. In this task, students will calculate the maximum height of a box car that will carry cultural heritage objects into the building, the car has a width of 167 cm. To solve this problem, students must know the relationship between the radius of the circle, the slope, and the distance of the circle from the center of the circle.
Where the width of the box car is the minimum segment length and the distance from the center of the circle is the maximum height of the box car. So, to solve it, students must measure the width of the gate which is the diameter of the semicircular gate first.