Trail of the month: Olomouc centrum (jednodušší)
The trail of the month December comes from the Czech Republic. Adéla Pantělejevová created the trail named “Olomouc centrum (jednodušší)” in the city center of Olomouc, the sixth largest city in the Czech Republic in the east of the country, while working on her thesis at Palacký University Olomouc. The trail can be accessed via the MCM app using the code 795612. It is available on the web portal here.
In total there are seven tasks, designed directly on the prominent buildings of the old town. So while walking the trail, you also get to know the most beautiful sides of Olomouc. You will find a short interview with Adéla on the trail and her experiences with MathCityMap below. Enjoy reading!
How did you come across the MathCityMap project?
Once our wonderful teacher Dr. Lenka Juklová arranged a lecture by Dr. Soňa Čeretková, which was about MCM (Soňa Čeretková is working on the MCM project in Slovakia) and I became very interested in this topic. During the lecture we had a chance to do a mathtrail around the faculty and I thought it would make a great topic for my thesis, since it had not been done in the Czech Republic yet. Dr. Juklová even suggested this topic to me so I am currently working on it under the supervision of Dr. Patrik Peška at the Palacký University Olomouc.
Please describe your Mathtrail.
This particular trail is designed mainly for primary school children. It was created as part of my thesis. Most of the existing trails are designed for high schoolers, however, I wanted to create a trail for younger learners too. It is very playful, fun, and intends to show how math can be connected to other school subjects and be found anywhere, in this case in the Upper Square in Olomouc. Although my studies are focused mainly on high school mathematics, I tutor also younger children and since several of them live around the center of Olmouc I wanted them to enjoy maths through MathCityMap aswell. I also implemented the pirate theme in my lessons, which should make the whole trail more interesting for children.
How do you use MCM and why?
My goal is to show teachers how to make mathematics interesting and fun, how to use the modern technology which is available for us, and moreover to show students that mobile phones and the internet don’t have to be used only for playing games or buying clothes online, but that they can be also helpful for looking up information, educating themselves, etc.. Furthermore, I recommended these trails to my friends and classmates, who are mostly secondary school teachers and high school teachers. Some of them had already started using it in their classes or it served them as a template for creating their own trails. One of my friends is now using MCM even in his physics classes.
My friend and I are currently trying to collect some task ideas for creating a template, which could be used in a lot of different places. What we have prepared so far can be soon used in other cities. I’m very much looking forward to it.
Describe your favorite task of the trail. How can it be solved and what can students learn from it?
My favourite task of this trail is definitely “Orloj”. It is a task with several sub-tasks, in which you have to understand the meaning of each dial and determine the number and type of different ornaments.. Students get to practice hours, days, weeks, months of the year, zodiac signs, as well as orientation and location, basic arithmetic along with characters and occupations. This task is not just about mathematics, rather it also tests general knowledge of third grade students. In the task students have to choose their answers from a list of options, add numbers and names to blank spaces, etc.. So it is not like other tasks where their answers have to fall within a certain interval.
