Relevant initiatives

YouMath

Fulvio Sbranchella

2011

National

No

Online course, On-line Game, Didactical resource

Maths

Italian

Students

The basic idea of YouMath is very simple and incisive: to create a forum where all users can find experts’ answers to their questions, curiosities and doubts on Maths.
After the initial phase, other sections were added enriching the website with a number of educational and didactical material.
In terms of numbers, the website has published more than 2.000 lessons, formularies and exercises and it has answered more or less to 18.000 questions.
Another key element of this website is that all the contents available are free.
The easy accessibility is improved by the list of the main menus on the top of the pages.
The “lezioni” (“lessons”) section is presented as a little encyclopaedia of the topics that are often or rarely taught at school or at the university. It contains many useful Maths lessons, sorted by topic, that help both for the study from zero or for the recovering study.
The “formule” (“formulas”) section offers Maths and Physics formularies with definitions, properties and all the necessary in order to succeed on oral and written exams.
The “esercizi” (“exercises”) section gathers very much Maths exercises. They are divided by topic and display solutions and step-by-step execution. Moreover, they are sorted by difficulty: beginner, intermediate and advanced. The consultation is without limits.
The “risolutore” (“solver”) section of YouMath, thanks to the automatic calculator, allows to solve online many Maths problems (equations, triple integrals, characteristic polynomial of a matrix, etc.).
The “risposte” (“answers”) section is a huge archive of 5.000 Maths problems solved by the staff.
The “giochi matematici” (“Maths games”) section gathers in the field of Maths and Physics both the classical games made with Flash (the shooter games are also here!) and Draughts, Chess and Sudoku. There are also many logical tests with the explanation on how to think in order to solve them. There are also interactive intelligence tests with which it is possible to estimate geometrical and analysis skills…
In conclusion, the “Forum” and “Blog” sections refer to similar contents

The first and greatest strength of this initiative is that the website has been created starting from students’ perspective. Students can consider this portal like their own personal teacher. They can ask questions in order to solve their doubts or in order to satisfy whatever Maths-related curiosity arising from everyday life (http://www.youmath.it/forum.html).
This website is reliable both for the quick replies and for the huge amount of answers already available into the archive.
Students will find assistance for every step of the study thanks to a well-structured toolkit consisting in: lessons, formulas and exercised. Users can easily enter the respective sections through the items always visible on the top of the pages.
Students will appreciate the interactive solvers like the automatic calculator of the derivate of a function (http://www.youmath.it/ym-tools-calcolatore-automatico/analisi-1/derivare-una-funzione.html).
One last noteworthy mention is for the section on “Maths games” (http://www.youmath.it/gioca-con-la-matematica.html): useful and amusing tools for logical reasoning and Maths knowledge training.

This website is online since the 2011. It offers both resources with traditional approach and recreational alternatives. The former are very well presented, full of exercises and appropriate for every educational level. The latter are really funny games, intelligence, reasoning and logical tests. The resources are grouped by level of difficulty. These range from arithmetic to syllogism and suggest some explanations about the reasoning to be follow to reach the solution.
There are also many (very interesting) Invalsi tests and the latest amendment of the respective legislation.
The portal is fully for free. It gives to the users the possibility to propose problems to be solved and to start threads on the forum. The surfing is simple, intuitive and fast.

This website is really cute and very well designed. There are many topics and they are explained in a very clear way. In addition, the numerous already solved exercises help to better understand the topics with the students.
“You can surf everywhere within the portal and you do not need to pay. If you need further explication you can also try to ask a question to the team who manage the portal”. The games are “particularly interesting and the multiple choice tests are really funny”. We used these latter in order to organise a challenge in laboratory splitting the class in 4 groups.
Even if we had to think in order to reach the solution “we were not aware we were having a mathematic lesson”.
Surfing this portal is very easy.
After our experience we can affirm that “it was like to have a teacher beside us” or to read “a book with the subtitles”.
We have no critics to make upon this website.