by: Gunnar Mein
It was a long day at together.science. 3 months ago, we invited our newest intern Richard to join us to think about how we could do an online, algebra-focused math competition that rewards people for showing their work. Why? Because Richard, organizer of many a math competition, was available, and it would be a good stretch for our "momentofmath.com" (MoM) platform.
A few weeks ago, it all came together and 20+ mathletes from Seattle to Boston, in grades 5 - 8, wrote oodles of statements over four rounds with many problems each, demonstrating why their answer was right - something that goes against the very grain of the common mathlete. Some had trouble, some blew us away. Most problems worked flawlessly, and for some, MoM insisted that 5/7 was indeed not 5/7.
After weeks of preparation and testing, it was hours of adrenaline and furious Zoom-wizardry organizing for our whole team. I was absolutely exhausted at the end - would the software hold up? What about the code I wrote last week? Did Richard and I miss a dysfunctional problem? Would we be able to deal with questions and problems fast enough? Would the middle schoolers find a way to foil our plans?
Most students that took our survey rated it a 4 out of 5 experience. We'll take that any day. The work produced is sometimes just beautiful, and we'll take that, too.
Is this our target audience? No. Is it our mission to host math competitions? No, at least not today. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. Just not next week.
Oh, and we did capture oodles of data about what students do when the try to solve problems. Because that is what you can do when you take the writing off the paper and into the browser.
MomentOfMath has come to another level because of the process and the deadlines. We got crisp about what it means to reward students for showing their work, and we will use this in the main product. We ran the event half-automated, and we can glimpse and see asynchronous, no-touch, always-available competitive or collaborative math events in the future. Most of all, it reassured us that we are on to something with our main idea - that if you give students decent tools to show their work in math, they will learn and like to do so, quickly.
Thanks go to the brave mathletes willing to spend 4 hours on a Saturday to do more math, our generous awards sponsors Wolfram and DESMOS, and of course to the team and volunteers who helped us test to make it this far!
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