The educational technology company MathTalk has finished the first pilot of its Math! Everywhere! app and is gearing up for the second, work that founder Omowale Moses sees as continuing the mission of his father, Robert Moses.
The older Moses was a civil rights activist and educator who saw algebra as critical to quality education, and therefore at the root of citizenship and participatory democracy in America. He founded The Algebra Project to bolster math literacy. He died in 2021, handing off the torch to his son.
MathTalk, a Cambridge public benefit corporation founded in 2015, aims to normalize talking about math from a young age – particularly among families in economically distressed communities – to set the stage for positive experiences. “We want to make sure that math isn’t a barrier or isn’t seen as an obstacle for children becoming whoever they want to become,” Omowale Moses said.
The goal took concrete form in 2016 with six interactive MathTalk installations placed in The Port neighborhood of Cambridge. The positive reception led the MathTalk team to further its research into using installations as a mode of math learning, going on in the fall of 2022 to create the Bob Moses MathTrail, a milelong path through The Port with eight “hot spots” to play with that showed math concepts, including the Gigantic Number Line and Venn Diagram. The installations were accompanied by the launch of the app Measure!Everything!, which used augmented reality to walk users through the MathTrail.
“The Pokemon Go of math learning”
The pilot of the new Math!Everywhere! app builds off of those years of research and refinements by the team. The app, which can be downloaded onto users’ own smartphones or tablets, superimposes augmented reality three-dimensional animated math games onto the real world, such as in a house or on a path as users walk through a park. The games were based on the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum used in Cambridge and Boston public schools.
“It is essentially like the Pokemon Go of math learning,” said MathTalk’s community research and development lead, Claudia Ferrara. Unlike the place-based MathTrails, the app can be used anywhere.
As a reward for completing math games, users gain a digital currency called MathBuck$ they can use to claim rewards at several participating businesses across Cambridge and Boston – all subsidized by upfront payments funded by grants. “It was really impactful being able to bring in local businesses and organizations, and to think about creating kind of an ecosystem that supports math learning,” said Moses, who describes the transactions as contributing to a “math-based microeconomy.”
Math microeconomy
The MathBuck$ could buy food such as a Donut Villa doughnut in Central Square or dessert at Lizzy’s Ice Cream in Harvard Square, services such as a haircut at the Nu Image Barbershop in The Port or merchandise such as a bracelet at the Popp Boutique, also in The Port, or Pokemon card booster packs at Pandemonium Books & Games in Central Square.
More than 140 families with children ages 4-8 participated in the pilot, which ran for four weeks during August. The results were overwhelmingly positive among families and the business owners, who all said they would take part in the program again, Ferrera said.
“My favorite part was the opportunity to have a special experience together and see his excitement to talk about math,” wrote one boy’s parent in a survey after the pilot.
Next up for the team
The pilot was supported by the Cambridge Community Foundation, a nonprofit working to reduce economic disparities across Cambridge. MathTalk is seeking funding elsewhere for a second, larger iteration of the pilot to take place by next spring or early summer. The program’s final form and its funding sources are not set, but MathTalk is expecting to rely on a combination of grants, subscriptions, school-bought subscriptions and community investment, Ferrara said,
Moses hopes to expand the reach beyond the 4-8 age range to include 2- and 3-year-olds. “There’s an opportunity to engage with parents when their kids are even younger, to begin to just create that identity, create that passion within kids around being a math person,” he said.
The goal is to make the app available nationally by the end of next year, making math fun, relevant and meaningful for everybody, Moses said.
Families interested in getting updates or taking part in future programs can reach out to Ferrera at claudia@mathtalkpbc.com
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