Estamos a viver num mundo complexo e com rápidas mudanças no qual será muito difícil sobreviver, sem sólidos conhecimentos e capacidades adequadas. Assim, o professor deve procurar estratégias, dentro e fora da sala de aula, que permitam ir ao encontro dos diferentes modos de pensar dos alunos, confrontando-os com tarefas, com múltiplas resoluções, que os desafiem a ver fora da caixa, os entusiasmem para aprender e os ponham a trabalhar uns com os outros. Por outro lado, há estudos que recomendam que as crianças precisam de se movimentar, pois um corpo ativo incita o cérebro, tornando os alunos mais envolvidos, o que contribui para um melhor desempenho. Neste sentido, a formação de professores, inicial e continuada, deve promover uma visão sobre a natureza da matemática e do seu ensino, que permita aos (futuros) professores ter diferentes experiências de ensino e de aprendizagem, que se espera venham a usar com os seus próprios alunos. Neste contexto, surge a gallery walk (GW) como uma estratégia a contemplar nas práticas de sala de aula, que permite que os alunos, através do trabalho colaborativo, resolvam problemas, apresentem e discutam as suas resoluções em pôsteres, localizados à volta da sala de aula. Neste artigo, discute-se um estudo de natureza qualitativa e interpretativa, numa abordagem exploratória, desenvolvido no âmbito da formação inicial de professores do 1.º e 2.º ciclos do ensino básico em Portugal (6-12 anos), no qual se pretende identificar as estratégias utilizadas pelos alunos na resolução de problemas com múltiplas resoluções, utilizando uma GW, bem como caracterizar sua reação durante o envolvimento nessa estratégia. Os resultados permitiram identificar as estratégias usadas e verificar o potencial da GW no envolvimento nas resoluções e discussões, que se mostrou mais eficaz do que nas discussões mais tradicionais, permitindo aumentar o repertório de processos de resolução de cada aluno.

Genome-scale metabolic models have been recognized as useful tools for better understanding living organism's metabolism. Merlin (https://merlin-sysbio.org/) is an open-source and user-friendly resource that hastens these models' reconstruction process, conjugating manual, and automatic procedures, while leveraging user's expertise with a curation-oriented graphical interface. An updated and redesigned version of merlin is herein presented. Since 2015, several features were implemented in merlin, along with profound changes in the software architecture, operating flow, and graphical interface. The current version (4.0) includes the implementation of novel algorithms and third-party tools for genome functional annotation, draft assembly, model refinement, and curation. Such updates led to an increase in the user-base, resulting in multiple published works including genome metabolic (re-)annotation and model reconstruction of multiple (lower and higher) eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

Genome-scale metabolic models have been recognised as useful tools for better understanding living organisms’ metabolism. merlin (https://www.merlin-sysbio.org/) is an open-source and user-friendly resource that hastens the models’ reconstruction process, conjugating manual and automatic procedures, while leveraging the user's expertise with a curation-oriented graphical interface. An updated and redesigned version of merlin is herein presented. Since 2015, several features have been implemented in merlin, along with deep changes in the software architecture, operational flow, and graphical interface. The current version (4.0) includes the implementation of novel algorithms and third-party tools for genome functional annotation, draft assembly, model refinement, and curation. Such updates increased the user base, resulting in multiple published works, including genome metabolic (re-)annotations and model reconstructions of multiple (lower and higher) eukaryotes and prokaryotes. merlin version 4.0 is the only tool able to perform template based and de novo draft reconstructions, while achieving competitive performance compared to state-of-the art tools both for well and less-studied organisms.

The society is evolving posing continuous challenges that demand the development of a specific set of skills and knowledge of its citizens. These core competencies involve problem solving, creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, that must be incorporated in the teachers' practice and developed by students. So, teachers must orchestrate productive discussions around the solution of tasks that allow multiple solutions (including visual ones). Students don't all have the same types of thinking, some are more analytical, others prefer visual approaches. This implies the use of strategies that meet the different types of thinking displayed by the students, confronting them with tasks that challenge them to see outside of the box. We introduced posters to foster students' learning as a tool that enable visualization and stimulate communication, through a Gallery Walk (GW), as an active learning instructional strategy. The GW allows students to solve a task, collaboratively, given them the opportunity to present, discuss and assess solutions in a poster placed around the classroom, in a similar perspective to that used by artists when they expose their works in a gallery. In this paper we share an ongoing study carried out with future elementary teachers (6-12 years old) where a GW was implemented that aims to characterize the strategies used by the students (future teachers) when solving tasks with multiple solutions, in particular to identify the visual solutions, and to characterize the reaction during their engagement in this GW strategy. An exploratory qualitative approach was adopted, collecting data through written productions (solutions, posters, comments to the posters), observations and a written report. The results showed that students enjoyed this experience, allowed to identify that students privileged visuals solutions of the tasks, and posters are a potential tool for assessment, through peer feedback, and allowed to verify the potentialities of the GW for a more effective teaching and learning of mathematics.

Tasks are a key resource in the process of teaching and learning mathematics, which is why task design continues to be one of the main research issues in mathematics education. Different settings can influence the principles underlying the formulation of tasks, and so does the outdoor context. Specifically, a math trail can be a privileged context, known to promote positive attitudes and additional engagement for the learning of mathematics, confronting students with a sequence of real-life tasks, related to a particular mathematical theme. Recently, mobile devices and apps, i.e., MathCityMap, have been recognized as an important resource to facilitate the extension of the classroom to the outdoors. The study reported in this paper intends to identify the principles of design for mobile theme-based math trails (TBT) that result in rich learning experiences in early algebraic thinking. A designed-based research is used, through a qualitative approach, to develop and refine design principles for TBT about Sequences and Patterns. The iterative approach is described by cycles with the intervention of the researchers, pre-service and in-service teachers and students of the targeted school levels. The results are discussed taking into account previous research and data collected along the cycles, conducing to the development of general design principles for TBT tasks.