In 2014, from 17 March till 16 April nine Serbian students visited Eger for a Short Study visit. They participated in the course "Visuality in Mathematic Education". The programme of the course was a wide range of possibilities how we can make the teaching of Mathematics more motivative and interesting. Our main topic this year was tiling and tessellations, most of the lectures and workshops dealt with this.
The first lecture was about general problemsolving methods, some theoretical background, why visualization is important in teaching Mathematics. Then the students got acquainted with different ways of visualizing mathematical problems: Emőd Kovács introduced the pupils with POV-Ray program, Ilona Téglási and Gábor Geda with the useful GeoGebra, and we also worked with Zometool modeling kit. The students visited a descriptive geomerty lesson in the practical school of the Eszterházy Károly College, where Istvánné Szilvási showed us, how they use Geogebra in real teaching situation. We’ve heard an interesting lecture from Ferenc Mátyás, who showed, how tiling can be used to prove a theorem in Number Theory. Tibor Juhász showed us, how algebraic group symmetries appear in Hungarian folk needleworks. Erika Gyöngyösi made a workshop about tetris, pentomino and tangram games, where everyone could try out these games. At the end Ilona Téglási gave a lecture about optical illusions, the perception of seeing – with some examples, how visual artists use such illusions in their artistry. The course also had a goal to organize a small exhibition from the works of the students – they were very creative to use the methods and knowledge they’ve gained during the course. As an illustration you can see one of the products, made by Anett Arc, Ljubica Sreckovic and Nina Tomovic.
Besides the official programs, the students visited different interesting places of Eger: we discovered the town from above in the tower of Lyceum (the main building of the College), visited the Archiepiscopal baroque Library, the Chapel, the Astronomical Museum, and played in the Magic Tower with interactive physical experiments. We visited the Orthodox Serbian Church, which was very interesting, with its nice wooden and golden altar screen. The students could join our Erasmus students in a trip to Budapest, and another to Hollókő. At the end of the month we had a farewell wine-tasting evening at Zsálya Restaurant.
This year, I think it turned out again after last year’s successful course, that those students, who undertake such a challenge to learn abroad, in unknown circumstances, are really open minded, creative and inquisitive. The atmosphere was friendly during the whole course, and after getting the students’s report I think they really felt well in Eger.
After all, we didn’t say good bye at the end, but: see you in Belgrad this Summer!
Ilona Téglási
Eszterházy Károly College, Eger, Hungary
