From Blocks to Beats: MIT Turns Maths into Hands-on Learning
Dr Wang shares how music can help visualise mathematical ideas: for example, different rhythms can correspond to different fractions.
Dr Wang Dichen believes guiding students to discover and construct mathematical concepts by themselves is far more important than asking them to memorise every step toward the final mathematical formula.
Dr Wang Dichen of the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology (MIT) led a workshop titled “From Blocks to Robots: Exploring Mathematics through Hands-on Learning” on 7 August, the final day of MIT’s Summer Programme (5–7 August). Speaking to an audience of around 30 secondary school students, Dr Wang delivered a clear message: technological progress is changing education, and in mathematics learning, understanding can move beyond rote memorisation of figures and formulas.
“Previously, students often had to rote-memorise mathematical concepts and formulas. Teachers could only do so much by using physical tools, such as number blocks, to help learners visualise ideas,” Dr Wang explained. “Today, educators have a much wider range of resources, including electronic technologies and AI, to teach more effectively and make learning more engaging.” She also reminded students that mathematics connects to many other fields, and showed how music can support mathematical thinking.
Dr Wang illustrated how musical elements can mirror geometric and numeric relationships. Different beats, she said, can correspond to different fractional values. Musical features can also represent geometry: for example, scales can indicate the number of sides, while the length of a note can be used to represent the size of an angle or an area. “Using music to teach mathematics doesn’t just make lessons more interesting, it can also stimulate students’ spatial imagination,” she added.
A student uses Polypad to create music through drag-and-drop operations with different polygons.
Following Dr Wang’s lecture, students put the ideas into practice using Polypad, an online learning platform that converts mathematical elements, such as fractions and geometric figures, into music. Through drag-and-drop operations with different polygons, students experienced how changing shapes can create different musical patterns. Abstract concepts became something they could hear and explore for themselves.
A student uses Gemini to explain what derivative means graphically.
At the workshop, students practise using Gemini to create interactive educational games.
Students can fully understand the questions if they are presented as an animation.
In the workshop, Dr Wang also discussed the role of AI in education. She pointed out that some primary school learners struggle to understand what mathematical questions ask. To address this, teachers can use AI to generate animations that present problems in clearer, more engaging ways. “Results showed that students can fully understand the questions if they are presented as an animation,” she said.
The rapid development of AI has reshaped how mathematics is taught. By using “vibe coding”— instructing generative AI through natural language—teachers can now easily create customised, interactive learning applets for students. Under Dr Wang’s guidance at the workshop, students used natural-language commands to instruct Gemini to build an interactive educational shopping game: players use different combinations of Hong Kong’s seven circulating coins to buy daily necessities worth a set amount of money.
To tackle even more complex geometry, Dr Wang shared how AI can help learners visualise 3D concepts like a sphere. “In the past, students found it difficult to visualise the internal structures of abstract 3D objects. For many students, it can be difficult to picture that all the biggest circles on a sphere (called great circles) intersect at the same central point: the centre of the sphere. With AI-generated 3D models, learners can now grasp these ideas more easily,” she said.
One of the participants, Chan Tsz-kiu, said the workshop broadened her view of how technology can support teaching. “I used to think learning mathematics was pretty boring,” she said, “but I learnt from the workshop that there are many tools to assist teaching. I especially liked the part where we practised using generative AI to write a learning programme about using the seven Hong Kong coins for shopping.” The Form Six student (in her final year of secondary school) hopes to become a primary school mathematics teacher and is interested in the Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Primary) – Mathematics programme at MIT after the workshop.
Chan Tsz-kiu, right, who aspires to become a primary school mathematics teacher, says Dr Wang’s lecture helped expand her understanding of the application of technology in education.
Dr Wang uses a small AI-enabled robot, which can answer mathematical questions in different languages, to demonstrate the power of technology in assisting teaching.
Dr Wang encouraged future educators to keep experimenting with new tools. “The widespread adoption of technologies such as AI has created significant innovation opportunities for education,” she said. “I hope teachers will continue using them to make learning more engaging, interesting, and efficient.”
Click here to learn more about MIT’s programmes, and here to read a related article about Dr Wang Dichen’s explanation about “Teaching for Mathematising”.
