GOOGLE MAPS

Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle and air (in beta), or public transportation (Google Maps, s.f).

This resource is very useful to work and improve some areas of education, such as geography and history, but for mathematics too. It involves the measurement as an important part of its utility, in terms of length and time. It is very profitable to know how much time we are going to late to go from one side to another (from home to the city centre, for example) and very easy to use it; we only have to write the place of destination and the place of destination, and the program offers us a range of ways to arrive there automatically, specifying the distance and the time. The image represents the way that Google Maps recommend us to go from Carranque to Constitution Square, in Málaga, indicating the time and diverse alternatives. 

In addition, we have the option to personalise our own way, indicating the streets and the squares for which we want to go; thus we can know the metres or kilometres of the drawn path. To carry out this option, we must click on the right side of the mouse and click again on “Medir la distancia”; then we only have to click on the preferred streets and to turn right or left. The image shows us an own route that I have designed to go from the Spanish Parliament to the Senat, in Madrid. 

In my opinion, Google Maps is excellent for learners. An activity to implement in class (second and third cycle) would be to calculate the metres they walk in a day. For that aim they should draw the route from their home to the school, the park, the academy… They would finish adding all the distances. Another activity, including the geography, would be designing our best journey. In it students ought to write the cities in Google Maps where they would go to see the kilometres and the time between places. Even they could add the prices of the planes (the program also tell us); in this way the calculations on money would be integrated too.

The benefits for children are great: they could improve their mathematical competence, with contents about measurement, such as distance and time while they use digital devices. Moreover, interdisciplinary contents, like geography, would be included, producing a more significant and deep learning.

References: 

Google Maps (s.f.). En Wikipedia. Recuperado el 29 de abril de 2019 de https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

THE SPORTS AND THE STATS

The statistics and the sport are strongly linked. In all the sporting disciplines the stats play a fundamental role in order to analyze the efficiency of the performances, and they are very useful to interpret the tactical management and to obtain conclusions. That numerical information is represented by percentages, comparison, averages, graphics… I am going to focus on two sports I like especially: football and basketball.

In football, statistics are concerned to observe both of the individual and collective performance. For example, from a group perspective, the quantity of passes and shoots indicate us if a team propose an offensive or defensive playing style, and we can compare it with the other clubs in order to make comparisons. From an individual point of view, the number of goals and assists of a player can induce us to think it is good or bad. For more advance information, the heatmaps help us to know which the most preferred position of a player is on the pitch. This image corresponds Messi’s movements on the pitch in a match in 2015.

In basketball the stats are primordial and more influential than in football: points, rebounds, assist, blocks, shot percentage, etc. These numbers are taken into account in naming the MVP of a competition. To give concrete examples, the best 2-points shooters are usually players who play near the basket (the tallest players), as well as the rebounds and the blocks are dominated by them; the best 3-points shooters are often short players. The table shows us the stats of a team in different disciplines (minutes, points, rebounds, assists…) of the play.

The most common hobby for Primary children are usualy the sports; for this reason it is a good idea to use it as a context in order to motivate them in the learning of mathematics. From my point of view, a useful activity (third cycle) could be the representation of different statistic information in graphics and finding the average. For example, the teacher would provide the number of points and rebounds of a player in ten games. Students would have to add all the points and rebounds to find the average, and then they would make a dot plot to observe the progression of their performance in points and rebounds (it would be compulsory to draw a line for each statistic discipline). To expand the activity, it could ask the best and the worst performance of the player and analyse them critically, thinking if the player is improving or getting worse observing the progression. 

THE €URO

The euro is the currency of the European Union, The are 343 million of people who live in the 19 countries of the eurozone, so  it is the second most negotiated currency in the world, after the dollar. 

The 1st of January 2002 the coins and bills were introduced in the European societies. Eight coins and seven bills were designed, and all of them are identical in the eurozone countries. The symbol (€) inspires in the Greek letter épsilon, which is the first letter of the word “Europe”, and it is crossed by two parallel lines that indicates stability.

However, they are some countries that don’t use it, such as Poland, Romania or Sweden. In addition, there are microstates that have an agreement with the EU to use the euro, like Monaco or Andorra. Finally, there are other countries, such as Montenegro or Kosovo, which have adopted the euro in a unilateral way. 

The euro has an exchange rate with the previous currencies of the eurozone countries. For instance, an euro is equal to 166 Spanish pesetas, 1’95 German marks, 1936 Italian liras or 6’56 French francs.

A feasible activity to work with third cycle students would be applying the rule of three in order to know the value of the past currencies of eurozone countries with regard to a particular amount of euros. For example, they could find how many pesetas 10 euros are, and the same with other currencies. Moreover, the teacher could plan a similar activity to compare the euro with the dollar (1 € is 1,12$ currently). These exercises are justified in the legislative framework, which has as evaluation criterion "conocer el valor y las equivalencias entre las diferentes monedas y billetes del sistema monetario de la Unión Europea".

Finally, other alternative would be to create a supermarket (second and third cycle), in which learners would sell and buy products. In this way they practice the mathematical operations mentally, boosting their mental arithmetic. To carry out this activity children could take the boxes, tetrabicks… they have at home to recycle; thus we provide a didactic utitlity to the recicled materials. Regarding the coins and bills, at the schools that kind of resources usually exists, which is given by the publishers.