Math Exercises for You Erasmus Project

Project Title

Math Exercises for You

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The project Math Exercises for You (2016-2019) had two main goals: The first one aimed to enhance mathematical competencies of students in secondary schools. The second goal targeted improving the English skills of teachers and pupils in mathematics by creating all project outcomes in English language as well as in the local languages of project partners (Czech, Polish, Slovak).

During the project, a new educational web portal Math for You (Math4U) focused on secondary school mathematics was created. It offers attractive and complex training materials for students and also it offers tools for teachers to prepare tests and exams. The Math4U portal includes three main parts – Math for Student (Math4S), Math for Teacher (Math4T) and Math for Class (Math4C).

In the application Math4S students find unique educational software for practicing all topics of secondary school mathematics. The software generates an interactive HTML test according to student preferences (topic, subtopic, level, number of questions). The student receives partial feedback (evaluation) after answering each question. An important feature of this software is multilingualism. The student can choose the language for a particular test and this chosen language can be changed at any time when working with the test. This also greatly contributes to broadening and deepening the knowledge of mathematical English.

Math4T is intended particularly but not only for teachers. A teacher can prepare an interactive test or a tailor-made written exam by choosing any questions he or she likes from the vast database of questions and then set the options to choose the desired form in which the test or the exam is generated. These options include either a printer ready version of written exam with multiple-choice questions complemented by an answer key or the possibility to generate an interactive PDF test. The interactive PDF test can be used for practicing with the whole class (using an interactive whiteboard or projector) or for a homework. The teacher can create several language versions of the same exam. This can be useful in case of bilingual schools or for exchange students in a class. It is also a great opportunity to improve language skills when preparing for international math competitions or when preparing to study abroad.

The applications Math4S and Math4T work with the database of 4,000 questions in each of four languages (English, Czech, Slovak and Polish), which is about 16,000 questions in total.

In the section Math4C, students and teachers find interesting quizzes and educational games called “matching games” and “table-selection games”. Mainly, the aim of these games is to match the questions with the correct answers. The attractiveness of matching games is increased by including quotes or parts of biographies of famous mathematicians, and by getting the feedback with funny comments and funny pictures. All 152 educational games are created as interactive PDF files with a high-quality math typography and are available in each of four languages. Teachers can present the games on an interactive whiteboard or use data projector and screen. In the first case, the whiteboard turns into a playing area and the students can directly mark their answers. When the teacher presents the materials using a screen and data projector, the students answer questions and either the teacher or referee mark their answers on computer. The materials are good for home practice too. Thanks to the interactivity and catchy graphics, the practice is funnier than a regular homework or exercises. The fact that the learning mathematics may take the form of interesting competition also motivates the students to learn together with their classmates.

Other activities realized during the project were:
– Educational activities of the project, which included summer math camp for students, shadowing teachers of mathematics and English mathematical terminology workshop. A total of 43 teachers and 28 pupils participated in these activities.
– Pilot use of project outputs at partner secondary schools on a sample of 1,289 students.
– Dissemination of project outputs. As a measuring tool, we used Google Analytics to count users of the math4u.vsb.cz portal. According to this tool the portal had 21,382 users during the project implementation (September 1, 2016 – August 31, 2019), who made 37,616 visits and visited 337,591 pages on the math4u.vsb.cz portal.

The project implementation team consisted of partners from three countries. A team from Czechia was composed of the project coordinator – VSB-Technical University of Ostrava and the two partner secondary schools – Wichterlovo gymnázium, Ostrava-Poruba and Gymnázium, Ostrava-Hrabůvka. Two other partners were from Slovakia – Gymnázium, Varšavská cesta, Žilina and Gymnázium Antona Bernoláka, Námestovo. The last partner was from Poland – Zespół Szkół w Lipnicy Wielkiej (Liceum Ogólnokształcące w Lipnicy Wielkiej).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 304252,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

VYSOKA SKOLA BANSKA – TECHNICKA UNIVERZITA OSTRAVA & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• Gymnázium Antona Bernoláka
• Gymnázium
• Wichterlovo gymnazium, Ostrava-Poruba, prispevkova organizace
• Gymnazium, Ostrava-Hrabuvka, prispevkova organizace
• Zespol Szkol w Lipnicy Wielkiej