Smart e-Learning Methods for Supporting Education of Mathematics in PrimarySchools

"Background, needs and challangesEducation in the 21st century faces challenges that traditional front-line methods cannot adequately address, as the PISA assessments show. There is a growing demand for adaptive teaching methods that are playful and adaptable to the individual needs of learners.Target groupThe target group for this project is mainly teachers in upper primary education (especially mathematics teachers), those who help prepare pupils (e.g. school staff) and pupils themselves, especially those from disadvantaged backgroundsObjectivesThe aim of the project was to create an innovative digital environment - to create appropriate content to support differentiated teaching and adaptive learning processes. The tools developed under the project were tested in real-life conditions and, based on the results of the pilot learning, the intellectual products were further developed and made freely available to all on the project website. The project has fully achieved its objective.Project resultsThe following products/outputs were produced during the project: 1. SMART e-Maths BETA digital environment for adaptive educationThe digital support environment consists of the following elements:A) Web-based content development tool: an easy-to-use teaching aid that allows teachers or even parents to create test/practice items, organize them into practice-guided test or test sets, and export the test sets to a native application running on mobile devices.B) Mobile application - Native application with (also) playful elements that provides a suitable user experience for playing content and running tests, available both as an Android version and as a web applicationC) Background application for planning and maintaining individual learning paths - An important support tool for individual learning and highly differentiated adaptive teaching is the ""smart"" e-learning application, which continuously redesigns and modifies the learner's learning path based on the information generated during the learning process.2.SMART e-Maths BETA digital content: nearly 200 super units, 5 blocks, 4 levelsThe digital content aims at achieving the level of mathematical competence expected by the end of grade 8 and focuses on the common cross-cutting of the Hungarian, Slovakian and Romanian framework curricula. Finally, the curriculum has been prepared in the subject area ""Operations with natural numbers"", so that it can be used in practically all grades of upper primary school. The curriculum is designed to support differentiated teaching and is therefore composed of exercises of different levels of difficulty (from basic to competitive, 5 levels). The practice material is also structured thematically, so that students can practise in an content with more than 20 levels. Everyone starts at the level of simple exercises and progresses up or down the system from there.3 Multilingual Methodology ManualThe methodology of the content development, the functioning of the digital tools and the lessons learned from the pilot training were summarised in a Methodology Manual, which was published in Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak and English on the project website. Sample teaching materials in English, Romanian and Slovak are also available in the digital support system. The digital support environment can be used in all these languagesUsability of the resultsThe results of the project are available on the project website and can be used free of charge by all. The outputs produced support educational processes in the following areas: - supporting differentiated education: each child can progress at his/her own learning pace - Increasing the motivation level of pupils by gamification tools - Supporting competence-based, interdisciplinary teaching methods contributing to the practical application of acquired knowledge (text-based maths exercises, skill-based problems, etc.); - developing problem-solving skills; - developing digital competences; - preparation for independent and self supporting learning and lifelong learning; - helping disadvantaged pupils to catch up, equal opportunitiesSustainability, miltiplication of resultThe widespread use of the project results was supported by intensive communication and dissemination activities, including the project and partners' websites, social media, direct mail campaigns targeting decision-makers, heads of institutions and the professional community, and on-line and off-line dissemination events. The considerable interest we have seen in adapting the results will lead to the development of further differentiated learning materials in the framework of the Seven SMART Steps project. Overall, the news has been widely disseminated, with dozens of teachers and hundreds of students actively using the project results."