what are they and what are they for

School mathematics is a subject that tends to divide students: for some –a few– it is a subject that is easy and fun for them; for others –many– it is absurdly complex and exasperating.

This negative perception of mathematics entails, perhaps as a cause or perhaps as a more obvious consequence, high rates of failure and dropout. We have all had classmates who have tried to avoid taking math courses, or even any other subject that involved its use, by looking for other educational options.

It was not so much that this other option was of interest to them: they simply wanted to flee from the suffering that mathematics caused them, considering and assuming that they did not have the intellectual capacities that they supposed were necessary to face them.

The socio-affective sense

The new Spanish educational law takes this situation into account when it refers, in the area of ​​Mathematics, to the relevance of paying attention to the subject in the curriculum of this subject. socio-affective sense (as well as numerical senseal algebraical spatialetc.), in order to integrate:

“[…]knowledge, skills and attitudes to understand and manage emotions, establish and achieve goals, and increase the ability to make responsible and informed decisions, which is aimed at improving student performance in mathematics, reducing negative attitudes towards them , to the promotion of active learning and the eradication of preconceived ideas related to gender or the myth of indispensable innate talent”.

math walks

An activity that fits perfectly in this desire to develop the sense socioaffective in learning mathematics are the math walks. They offer students –and also to any of us– an opportunity to learn in a playful and passionate way, in an extracurricular environment, to work on real problems and integrate learning by discovery. But what is a math walk?

A math walk is made up of a series of math tasks associated with precise locations, dealing with math questions about real objects along a path. This is the definition found on the website of the European project MoMaTrE (Mobile Math Trails in Europe) in which members of the Spanish Federation of Societies of Mathematics Teachers (FESPM) have participated.

The official definition is:

“Activity with which to show and discover mathematical elements and properties in places where they might not be expected, with the aim of helping to understand the beauty that can be generated with the proper use of geometric shapes and properties, and to train our gaze to capture the mathematical relationships that are sometimes hidden in the most unexpected objects”.

In the mathematical routes, squares, facades, fountains, urban furniture, stairs, sports fields, etc. are used as a source of data to pose mathematical problems, whenever it is necessary to carry out some measurement or interaction with the object, figure or environment. in question in order to resolve them.

What is pursued, therefore, through this didactic and informative resource, is to propose and address mathematical tasks in the environment close to the students and ordinary citizens who want to get involved in one of these routes, alone or in the company of others (family , friends).

Apps and gamification

It is estimated that the first mathematical route was developed in Australia, in the eighties of the last century. At present, with technological advances and the massive use of mobile phones, the expansion of mathematical walks throughout the world is due to the spread of a app free, MathCityMap, developed at the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

It allows you to create a mathematical route (with different associated tasks, by means of geolocation, to different places and objects), and also carry out an already created one, or customize it in a specific playful context: for example, pretending that you are pirates in search of a treasure . It also serves to evaluate the results obtained.

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The application has more than 60,000 tasks proposed in math walks around the world and more than 20,000 users.

In Spain there are currently more than three hundred public routes (urban, country, within an educational center, a building or monumental place, or in open spaces, etc.), that is, without counting those created by teachers for exclusive use with their students.

And in Latin America, the MathCityMap portal confirms the existence of more than a hundred of these public walks in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Uruguay…

‘Mathing’ on the go

Whether for informative use -during Science Fairs or Pi Day, etc.- or pedagogical, this app deserves to be promoted.

Paraphrasing the poet:

Walker, there is no path, the path (and mathematics) is made by walking!

Tomás Jesús Recio Muñiz, Magisterial Professor (Mathematics), Nebrija University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.