Do you have a Chromebook?  Are you a student or a teacher looking for the mighty power of Maple, but find yourself limited by your web-only computer? Well, have no fear, because Maple Learn is here!

As a web-based application, Maple Learn is fully supported by Chromebooks. You can create graphs, perform and check calculations, and share documents all within the comfort of your own browser. No need to download any kind of software—just go to learn.maplesoft.com to get started!

Students, if you’re looking for some use for your school-provided Chromebook and wondering how it can help you learn instead of just weighing down your backpack, Maple Learn can help. It’s the perfect, all-inclusive tool to help you learn, visualize, and check your math. And, if you’re looking to brush up on all that math you forgot over the summer, you can check out the Maple Learn Example Gallery, home to hundreds of examples and explanations of a wide variety of math concepts. And it’s all accessible on your Chromebook!

Calling all fans of customizable documents! What am I saying, we’re all fans of customizable documents here. Well, we’re all in luck, then, because with our latest updates to Maple Learn you can tailor even more details of your documents to your exact specifications. Read on to see what’s new!

As we all know, graphs are not merely a method of communicating mathematical concepts, but are of course an art form that can be used to display both mathematical and aesthetic beauty. But sometimes, you may find a little something getting in the way of that beauty… those darn gridlines. Even the most elegant of graphs can be tarnished by this faint, criss-crossing lines. But have no fear! With our latest updates, you can fix this problem with the click of a button. Simply select “Plot Settings” from the graph controls to the right of the plot window, and set Axes to “None”. Finally, your graph is pristine. What’s more, that’s not the only new feature we’ve added to the Plot Settings menu. You can also set the axes to “Boxed”, allowing you to see the gridline labels no matter how from the origin you are on the graph. You can also manually set the boundaries of your axes! No more scrolling and zooming to get the perspective just right.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also added another exciting feature that will help make your graphs look exactly as you want them. By clicking the small graph icon to the left of your expression, you can customize the colour of your plot! You can choose from a wide variety of pre-set colours, or you can use our colour selector to get the exact shade you want. Any custom colours will be temporarily added to the bottom of the colour palette, so you can be sure that your graphs are consistent. At last, you can rest assured that your Maple Learn graphs won’t clash with your outfit.

What’s more, if you’re a fan of graph customizability, then this is the set of updates for you. We’ve added two more features that will help make your graphs both pretty and easy to understand. Tired of trying to draw shapes, only to have each side be a different colour? Well, no more! We’ve adjusted the Segment command to accept as many coordinates as you’d like, allowing you to create polygons (or just funky zigzags) to your heart’s content! As well, we’ve introduced a new command: the Label command. Now you can add text right onto the plot window and label your graph as you see fit. Or maybe you could use the Maple Learn plot window to start drafting a best-selling novel. The possibilities are endless!

We also wanted to take a moment to highlight our Example Gallery. We’ve made some changes to make it easier to find the examples you’re looking for. And with over 400 documents and counting, we’re sure to have what you want! But, on the off-chance we don’t, let us know! We’d love to hear about what you’d like to see. And as always, that goes for both the Example Gallery and for any features you’d like in Maple Learn itself! We appreciate your feedback.

We had the exciting opportunity to interview Dr Trefor Bazett, a math professor at the University of Victoria who also regularly posts videos to his YouTube channel explaining a wide variety of math concepts, from cool math facts to full university courses. You may also recognize him from the recent webinar he did on effective interactive learning! If you’re a teacher, and particularly if you’re trying to find ways to keep your students engaged when teaching math online, read on for some great advice and perspective from someone who’s already built a significant online following. If you’re not a teacher, read on anyways! We may not all be teachers, but we’ve all been (or are!) students. And as students, we probably all have some opinions on how things should be taught! Read on for a new perspective, and maybe even some new ways to approach your learning in the future.

What are some unique challenges presented by teaching math online, and how do you overcome them?

Teaching online I work a lot harder to keep students truly engaged. I’m a big believer in active learning, which means that students are actively taking part in their learning through solving problems, asking questions, and making connections themselves. This might seem a bit strange coming from a YouTuber since watching a video is one of the most passive ways to learn! When it is an in-person class, the social pressures of that environment make it easier to create a supportive learning environment that fosters active engagement. When I teach online, I try to scaffold interactive activities and learning opportunities around my videos, but for me at least it is challenging! I find it easier in many ways to think of the passive components of my teaching like creating a video that introduces a topic but designing learning activities around those videos where students are engaged and feel like they are part of a supportive community is crucial. 

Do you think the experience of teaching online has led to any positive trends in education that will live on once students are back in the classroom?

Absolutely. Whether we wanted to or not, teachers now have experience and skills integrating technology into their learning because so many of us had to figure out how to teach online. The big question is how do we leverage these new technological tools and experiences and resources we have created for when we return to the physical classroom? Can we reincorporate in a new way, for instance, the videos we created for the pandemic? We have so many amazing tech tools – and of course I have to shout out Maple Learn as one of those! – that made it possible for students to engage in interactive learning in the online space, but now we can think about all the ways to leverage these tools in face-to-face learning whether as part of a classroom demo, in-class student activities, or outside-of-class activities.

How do you think the influx of math educators on social media, such as yourself, has changed and will change the shape of math education?

I’m so proud of the math education community on YouTube and other platforms, the quality and diversity of math education online is truly incredible. Having universal access to free high quality education materials can really help level the playing field. But there is still a crucial role to the classroom as well, whether it is in person or online. Just watching YouTube videos on a math channel isn’t going to be enough for most people. You need to be actively practicing math in a supportive environment, receiving feedback on your progress, and getting help when you need it. I feel there is a lot of opportunities for teachers to leverage online materials for instance by linking students to excellent expository content while in class teachers are focusing on designing engaging active learning activities.

What made you decide to create a YouTube channel? Do you have any tips for others wanting to do the same?

My first online course was designed asynchronously and so I needed a place to host the videos for that course. Why not YouTube? I only had twenty students in the course, and never imagined anyone else would actually watch them, let along millions of them! But when I noticed my first math video that got picked up by the YouTube search algorithm and I kept getting comment after comment thanking me I realized there really was a big appetite for quality math education content on YouTube.

My biggest tip is just to get started! Your first video isn’t (probably!) going to be the one that gets picked up by the YouTube algorithm, but it is the one that starts you on that path and builds up your skills at telling math stories, speaking to the camera, using the technology, and so forth.  Don’t worry about that first video being completely perfect or mimicking the “style” of other YouTubers, use it as a chance to build from. If you want to know more about my process for making videos, I share a lot of my process here.

What do you think is the best way for students to approach homework problems?

Homework is often perceived, rather understandably, as a burdensome chore you frustratingly have to do. If that is the perception, then it is also understandable that students would take behaviours that might help them get points on the homework but aren’t very effective for learning. However, if you think about homework as both an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to get feedback on how effective your learning is, now you can engage in much more effective behaviours.

My suggestion is to always genuinely try the problem on your own first. If I’m completely stuck, I really like to write down everything I do know about the problem such as the definitions of the math words involved in the problem. This makes it so much easier to see all the pieces and figure out how to assemble them a bit like a jig-saw puzzle.

I’m a big believer in self-regulated learning, where you are identifying precisely what you know and what you don’t know, and then adapting you learning to zero in on the parts that are challenging. Technology tools like Maple Learn that provide step-by-step solutions to many types of math manipulations can help with this self-regulation, for instance by verifying that you correctly did some cumbersome algebra or precisely where the mistake is at.

Even if you have solved the problem, you can still learn more from it! You can imagine how the instructor could modify that question on a test and if so how would you respond? You can map out how this problem connects to other problems. You can write down a concept map of the larger picture and where this problem fits in it. I have a whole video with a bunch more strategies for approaching homework problems beyond just getting the answer here.

As a teacher, what is your opinion on providing students with step-by-step solutions?

Step-by-step solutions definitely have a role. To master math, you need to master a lot of little details, and then the deeper connections between ideas can start to form. Step-by-step solutions can really help support students mastering all those little details because they can identify the precise location of their confusion as opposed to just noting they got the wrong answer and not be able to identify where exactly their confusion lies. I think they can also help lower math anxiety as students can be confident they will have the tools to understand the problem.

However, it is important to use step-by-step solutions appropriately so that students use them as a supportive learning tool and not a crutch. Sometimes students try to learn math by mimicking the steps of some process without deeply understanding why or when to apply the steps. There can be a big gap between following a solution by someone else and being able to come up with it yourself. This is where teachers have an important role to play. We need to both be clear in our messaging to students about how to use these supports effectively, as well as to consistently be asking formative questions that encourage students to reflect on the mathematics they are doing and provide opportunities for students to creatively solve problems. 

You spoke a bit in your webinar about the “flipped classroom” model. Do you have any tips for educators who want to move more towards a flipped classroom where in-class time is focused on discussion and exploration?

I really love flipped classroom approaches. The big idea here is that students established foundational content knowledge before class, for instance by watching my pre-class videos, so they are empowered to do more collaborative active learning in class. The social supports of class are thus focused on the higher-level learning objectives. However, as much as I love this approach, it is just one of really an entire spectrum of options that start to shift towards student-centered learning. My main tip is to start small, perhaps just adding in one five-minute collaborative problem to each class before jumping all the way to a flipped classroom pedagogy. For myself, it took a few years where I kept adding more and more active learning elements to my classroom and each time I did that I felt it worked so well I added a bit more. One positive consequence from the pandemic-induced shift to online learning is there is now a tremendous amount of high-quality content available for free, so it is easier today to start embracing a fully flipped classroom than it has ever been.

What are some ways teachers can let students take their learning into their own hands?

This is so important. Sometimes teaching can be too paternalistic, but I think we should trust our students more. Give students the time and space to try tackling interesting problems and it will happen! Our role as teachers is to create a supportive learning environment that is conducive to students learning. A few ingredients I think that can help are firstly to encourage students to collaborate and support each other. Mathematics is an inherently collaborative discipline in practice, but this can also be very helpful for learning. Secondly, we can provide effective scaffolding in problems that provide avenues for students to get started and making progress. Thirdly, tech tools like Maple Learn let us take some of the friction away from things like graphing, cumbersome algebra, and other procedural computations meaning we can instead focus our learning on developing conceptual understanding.

In your opinion, how can we motivate students to learn math?

Authenticity. Motivation is sometimes divided between intrinsic motivations (enjoyment of the subject itself) and extrinsic motivations (for instance wanting to get a good grade), and in general we learn more effectively and more deeply when we are intrinsically motivated. To capture intrinsic motivation, I always try to make my teaching and the problems I ask students to work on to feel authentic. That might mean the problem connects to real world challenges where students can see how the math relates to the world, but it doesn’t have to! A problem that stays in pure math but asks and answers interesting mathematical problems and delights the learner is also great for intrinsic motivation. If students are empowered to tackle authentic problems in a supportive learning environment, that motivation will naturally come.

What’s your favourite number, mathematical expression, or math factoid?

Somewhere on the surface of the earth, there is a spot that has the exact same temperature and pressure as the spot exactly opposite it on the other side of the earth. This is true no matter what possible weather patterns you have going on all around the earth! That this has to always be true is due to the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and if you want to know more about this theorem and its many consequences, I’ve done a whole video on it here.

Any parting thoughts?

At the start of every new school year, I read about dozens of cool ideas and am tempted to think “I want to try that!”. I suggest instead finding one thing to improve on the year before, one thing that you can really invest in that will make a difference for your students. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every year!

Another series of updates to Maple Learn? It’s almost like we’re constantly working on Maple Learn to add more features and improve based on your feedback! Wild, right? Anyways, here’s some of the latest features we’ve added to Maple Learn.

First, we’re very excited to present our new Example Gallery. Not only does it have a shiny new design, but there are now over 400 example documents in just about every area of mathematics you can think of.  These documents are perfect for seeing how Maple Learn can be used to teach and explore concepts, and you can easily modify them to suit your own needs. We’re still working hard on improving the Example Gallery and its content, so let us know what you want to see!

We’ve also got some shiny new features in Maple Learn itself. Do you ever look at a graph and think, “Wow, this is great and all, but I sure would love if it had fewer straight lines and more circles?” I know I do. Luckily for both of us, Maple Learn now supports polar coordinates! Just click the round globe icon to see your plots transformed to the circular form you’ve always wanted them to be.

Looking to enhance the text portion of your documents, rather than the graphs? We’ve got just the thing for you—Maple Learn now supports bullet lists! Take your pick of numerical lists, alphabetical, or your traditional bullet point. If you’re looking to augment your document with a step-by-step process, a list of your favourite mathematical expressions, or you’re just feeling tired of using pen and paper for grocery lists, Maple Learn now has what you need.

Speaking of improving the layout of your documents, we now have an option for horizontal tables. The vertical tables can get a bit a long, especially for a short document, but with horizontal tables you can keep all your documents cozy and compact.

And as always, this is just a taste of what we’ve been up to. We’ve also improved a variety of features (including our new steps feature!) and fixed an assortment of bugs. And remember, we couldn’t do this without you! Please continue to let us know what you’d like to see in Maple Learn, and someday it could be your request featured in our post!

Calling all teachers! Have you ever sat wracking your brain on how to create an engaging lesson for students who aren’t so keen on math? Are you trying to help your students understand concepts on a deeper level? Well, Dr Trefor Bazett’s webinar “How to Design Effective Interactive Learning Activities” might have the answers you seek. Dr Trefor is professor at the University of Victoria who has risen to fame on the internet with his engaging YouTube math tutorials. He recently gave a great talk sharing some of the things he’s learned about teaching and how he structures his course content to maximize student learning and engagement. We wanted to take the time to highlight a few of the points he made.

One of the things Dr Trefor emphasized in his talk was the concept of active learning. Unusual as it may seem, math is a lot like juggling. You can learn all the theory of juggling and how it’s supposed to work, but when it comes down to it, if you want to learn how to juggle, you have to actually juggle! And as he describes, it’s the same for math. If you want to learn math, you have to actually do math. This means that educators need to find a way to make learning active for their students, and find ways for them to actually explore and use the concepts that are taught in class. There are many ways to approach this, and Dr Trefor has a few ideas in his talk that might help get you started! For example, he discusses a backwards model wherein teachers create their lectures based on the assessments and activities, rather than the other way around. That way, you can be sure that what you’re teaching is what the students need to know in order to complete the activities you’re giving them—and that in turn can make the activities more engaging for the students.

Another idea he talked about that I personally found quite appealing was the idea of incorporating storytelling into your teaching. Stories are always more interesting than just plain lectures. And you don’t even have to weave together a grand epic with elements of math being taught along the way (although that would be pretty cool!). It can be as simple as changing the way you explain a concept. “X is true, but, Y is also true! Therefore…” Doesn’t that seem a little more interesting? By tying together concepts with pseudo-narrative threads using ‘but’s and ‘therefore’s, you can create a lecture that students will want to listen to—after all, they’ll want to know what happens next.

Drawing from some of the science behind learning, Dr Trefor also discussed the idea of cognitive load. This is essentially the amount of stress the student is experiencing when they’re trying to learn. Concepts will always have a certain amount of intrinsic load to them—that is, when you’re trying to learn how to factor a quadratic equation, there’s going to be some amount of stress associated with factoring itself. The part educators can focus on reducing is the extrinsic load, which is the stress caused by outside factors. For example, your factoring lesson may be hindered by having to teach online instead of in-person, or by the fact that you keep thinking 2x3 is 5 (or maybe that’s just me!). Dr Trefor describes how online tools like Maple Learn can help to reduce this extrinsic load. With a way to show and explain a wide variety of concepts without pencil and paper, and to help perform those calculations that are muddying up the underlying concept, you can reduce the cognitive load and help your students learn.

This is just a taste of some of the ideas Dr Trefor talked about in his webinar. If we’ve piqued your interest, you can watch the full thing for yourself here, or by clicking the video below! Be sure to check out Dr Trefor’s channel as well if you want to see his dynamic teaching style in action.