TechCamp
June 2026
Campus Leonardo Milano
Corso attivato
Ultimi posti disponibili
Geolocation is a technology we use every day, often without realizing it.
From car navigation to mapping and fitness apps, to logistics and sea rescue, the ability to determine the location of an object or person in space plays a fundamental role in everyday life and in science and technology.
The GPS Mathematics Summer School is designed for high school students in their first three years. The program offers a laboratory experience combining mathematics and programming, which participants will develop in working groups.
The journey starts with the educational game “Find the Treasure”, implemented through an application that poses a very complicated problem: finding a submerged object based on experimental data.
This context becomes the starting point for a mathematical modeling course in which participants will learn to describe and interpret real-world situations using mathematical tools.
From a mathematical perspective, the work will focus on the canonical ellipse and parametric curves. These concepts will be introduced and explored first in a practical manner, and then further explored theoretically.
An in-depth study of geolocation applications will reveal how the mathematical concepts used in the game “Find the Treasure” relate to the principles that make modern location technologies, such as GPS, possible.
In parallel, participants will be guided in the use of MIT App Inventor (https://appinventor.mit.edu/), a block-based programming educational platform that allows you to create applications intuitively.
At the end of the Summer School, the final product will consist of:
Mathematical skills
Transversal skills
Digital competence
| Monday (morning) | • Welcome and group formation • Introduction to the problem of geolocating a submerged object and exploration of the scenario through the educational game "Find the Treasure." • Mathematization of the problem and introduction of the Cartesian ellipse |
| Monday (afternoon) | • In-depth study on geolocation |
| Tuesday (morning) | • In-depth study of conic sections and parametric curves |
| Tuesday (afternoon) | • Introduction to MIT App Inventor with tutorials |
| Wednesday (morning) | • Development of the “Find the Treasure” App in working groups |
| Wednesday (afternoon) | • Development of the “Find the Treasure” App in working groups |
| Thursday (morning) | • Seminar-Development of the “Find the Treasure” App in working groups |
| Thursday (afternoon) | • Drafting of the project report |
| Friday (morning) | • Seminar - Drafting of the project report |
| Friday (afternoon) | • Presentation of the report |
A personal laptop with an up-to-date browser is required. Lab activities will be conducted primarily in Google Colab, with no need to install any other specific software.
A personal Google account is required to access and use Google Colab during the labs.
The use of company laptops or devices is not recommended, as they may have restrictions preventing access to Gmail, Google Drive, or Google Colab. For the final presentation, students may use tools of their choice, such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, Canva, or equivalent.
Tablets and iPads may be used, but are not recommended as the primary device; in this case, an external keyboard and mouse are strongly recommended.
