M C Squared @ Les journées Nationales APMEP
- Created on 02 November 2015
The French annual conference on teaching mathematics “Les journées Nationales APMEP” were held in Laon in October 2015 with about 800 participants. The M C Squared partner Aristod was present in the exhibition and animated a workshop.
At the exhibition, widgets, features and resources of the project were demonstrated to teachers, in particular: TetrisQuiz, Aplusix Web exercises and Dynamic Algebra.
TetrisQuiz (http://www.tetrisquiz.org) are educational games in which items are falling slowly one by one from the top of the screen. There are target cells at the bottom and the player has to place each falling item in the right target cell by touching on a tablet (or clicking on a computer). There is a score displayed in gauges and a feedback on errors. A family of 80 TetrisQuiz produced by Aristod and the M C Squared partner University of Lyon, mainly in mathematics (but a few in astronomy, geography, and language) was available for the demos. The figure below shows a TetrisQuiz in geometry on the classification of quadrilaterals.
Teachers enjoyed this new approach of quizzes that makes math more fun and its availability to mobile devices that allows practicing math outside the classroom.
Aplusix Web exercises (http://www.epsilon-publi.net/aplusixweb/) are interactive arithmetic and algebra exercises that the student has to solve in a scaffolding situation: a permanent feedback on the validity of the formulas and the equivalence with the previous step is displayed. A family of 40 Aplusix Web files of exercises produced by Aristod was available for the demos in the domain of algebra for grades to 7 to 11. The figure below shows an Aplusix Web on a tablet with quadratic equations to be solved.
Teachers were happy to see that with this tool students can make their own calculation steps and get a feedback so they can correct or improve their own calculation strategies.
Dynamic Algebra is a feature of the EpsilonWriter software for calculation with gesture. Demos are available at http://epsilonwriter.com/en/demosAD/
Teachers were really impressed by the power of the tools: equation solving, calculations on limits, derivatives, substitutions. They were also a bit inquiring about the way to keep control on what the student really does, and so were interested by the control given by the parameters setup.
The workshop main theme was the creation of content for TetrisQuiz. TetrisQuiz are created with the EpsilonWriter software. They can be uploaded on the M C Square platform but also saved on the Aristod portal http://epsilon-publi.net This second way allows teachers who do not belong to the project to store their productions in a place where they are available for everybody. During the workshop, the structure of the data of TetrisQuiz was explained and the way to insert text, math, and images. The formula generator of EpsilonWriter was explained, it allows producing a lot of formula from a model.
The teachers were able to practice and to build their first TetrisQuiz. They really appreciated the formula generator as a tool to ensure a quick production without sacrificing variety of the content.
