Barak@TIC is an initiative intended to promote digital skills and technological innovation. It offers online workshops and conferences which are intended to be accessible to as many teachers as possible. For more details, you can visit the website for the 2024 edition of the event here.
On the second day, we participated in two activities that focused specifically on mathematics. Here are some notes about what we learned.
Nine applications taken from Sylvain Duclos’ toolbox
Sylvain Duclos, a high school mathematics teacher in Quebec, well known as Mr. 1 App per day, presented a dynamic workshop entitled “Touski Mathematics”. Its aim was to show how mathematics can be taken out of exercise books by using digital technology to make learning more attractive and interactive.
He insisted on the importance of having a clear educational intention before choosing a digital tool. According to him, there are so many tools that it is possible to find the one that perfectly matches the intended learning objective. It encourages teachers to explore different possibilities to find creative and engaging solutions for teaching mathematics.
To illustrate his remarks, the teacher presented nine tools that are part of his personal toolbox. He emphasized those that allow students to manipulate mathematical concepts, make mistakes, and learn from them.
- Formative: A paid application for creating interactive online tests and exercises. He highlighted the drag-and-drop, check-boards, and item-matching features that make learning more dynamic. He also mentioned the ability to embed videos and questions at specific times, which helps create flipped classroom activities.
- Graspable Math: A free tool for manipulating algebraic equations and exploring the properties of operations. He showed how it allows you to visualize the distributivity, commutativity and associativity of operations, as well as solve equations step by step.
- Polypad: An American platform that offers various features for learning mathematics, with which it uses an “algebraic machine” that allows students to enter values into a function, view the table of values and the corresponding graph, and to guess the equation of the function. He showed how this tool helps develop the sense of function and its different modes of representation.
- Desmos: A free online graphing calculator that also offers a variety of interactive activities created by teachers. He presented a game, featuring Super Mario, in which students must modify quadratic equations so that Mario catches coins, illustrating in a playful way the role of the different parameters of such functions.
- Canva: A well-known graphics creation tool that he uses, for example, to create animated GIFs that illustrate mathematical concepts. The teacher demonstrated how to do this with an example illustrating solving an algebraic equation step by step.
- Scratch: A free visual programming language that allows students to create games and animations. Sylvain Duclos presented two projects that he is carrying out with his students: a space shuttle game which allows you to explore the concepts of variables, coordinates and movements, and a tax calculator which allows you to work on operations and percentages.
- TinkerCAD: A free 3D modeling software that can be used to represent mathematical objects in two or three dimensions. He demonstrated how to use TinkerCAD to create geometric shapes, calculate areas and volumes, and even print 3D models.
- Genially: A free online platform for creating interactive escape games. He presented an example of an escape game that he created for his students with the platform, in which he integrated mathematical puzzles, secret codes and even… references to culture geek.
- Deck Toys: A free platform to create games with cards, keys to collect and puzzles to solve. He showed how this tool allows you to create differentiation courses, with varying levels of difficulty.
Sylvain Duclos recalled at the end of the workshop the importance of let students master digital tools before introducing them to new ones. It’s not about getting as many as possible, it’s about finding the right ones. He also encouraged teachers not to hesitate to use resources already created by others to save time and not to put too much pressure on themselves to integrate digital technology at all costs.
You can find its visual support here!
BookWidgets, an application for creating interactive learning activities
Nicolas Pauwels, a mathematics teacher in Belgium, gave a detailed presentation of the use of BookWidgets in his teaching. This application allows teachers to create a variety of interactive activities for students through the different types of modules available, called widgets. The facilitator presented some examples of possible use in a mathematics course, ranging from formative and summative assessments to remediation exercises, through preparation activities including quizzes, worksheets, revision cards, quests on the Web and more. The presentation aimed to demonstrate the versatility of the tool.
Some of the key features of BookWidgets shown include the variety of question types (multiple choice, open-ended, drag and drop, matching, whiteboards, numbers and equations, etc.), integration of multimedia elements, feedback snapshot to understand errors, customizing correction settings, adding instructions and comments, and even creating differentiation paths. We also note the integration of activities with platforms such as Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, thus facilitating the distribution of activities and monitoring of student progress.
Its presentation support can be found here.
Happy discoveries!
