Silent Teacher Maths

Brief summary

Silent Teacher is a minimalist game that allows a novice to discover and understand relatively technical concepts in coding and mathematics by themselves, without any explanation being provided.
They are guided by a series of questions that start off simple and become increasingly difficult, so that they can use trial and error to work out the rules and logic that lie behind these puzzles.

New: the "Maths" section

Silent Teacher originally started out in coding, and our coding courses can be done completely independently. Our mathematics courses are also accessible online, but these require the discreet presence and guidance of a teacher.
The player needs to understand that they are not supposed to know the answers to the questions straight away, and that they should view them more as riddles.

Our "Maths" courses

• proportionality
  
  This is the simplest of our courses. It focuses on calculating proportions and cross multiplying, concepts that many adults don't master.
• Pythagoras’ theorem (without any demonstration) and its application in a specific case (distance between two points in 2D space)
  
  The only prerequisite in terms of knowledge is to be comfortable with simple multiplication. Players do not need to know about square roots or squares; these will be deduced during the course.
• scalar product, and its geometric interpretation
  
  This is the first course we have created based around maths, after we observed a need in post-baccalaureate students on a video game development programme. With this audience, the course successfully led an entire class to understand the geometric interpretation of the scalar product in just 30 minutes, whereas this would typically take 4 or 5 hours with a teacher.

Prerequisites for these courses

• The courses have been designed such that their only prerequisite in terms of “knowledge” is knowledge of times tables and simple addition (5 x 5, 3 x 6, 100 x 6, 34 + 2). The rest is covered by the course. As such, it is to be expected that individuals with more previous knowledge will find the first few minutes too easy. However, starting from “zero" also helps to reassure those who think they are "rubbish at maths".
• he most important prerequisites do not concern knowledge, but rather mindset. The player needs to understand that they are not supposed to know the answers to the questions straight away, and that they should view them more as riddles. The facilitator can play a crucial role here. We start the maths courses with "cats’ paws" (see below) to get the player into this mindset.
• Please note that some courses are a little long for children aged 8 years, and some may give up before the end due to a lack of patience (rather than due to getting stuck). The facilitator can play a crucial role here.
• On the technical side, it is preferable to use Google Chrome or Firefox. If you don’t have internet access, contact us and we will offer a solution.

How to run a Silent Teacher Maths activity

Read our tips here