Teaching Maths and Code Without Installing Anything

Most classroom tools handle discussion and recall well. Maths and code are harder, and for opposite reasons. Maths wants handwriting — a whiteboard, a visualiser, a tablet and stylus nobody has. Code wants an installed environment — Python on thirty machines, admin rights, and a first lesson spent fixing PATH variables instead of teaching loops.

Both problems have the same shape: the subject is fine, the setup is what eats the room. Here’s how to run each without any of it.

MathsBoard — working out, one step at a time

A MathsBoard is a live worked solution. You type maths as plain text and it renders as proper typeset notation — (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac))/(2a) becomes the quadratic formula as you’d write it on a board. Everything is composed from the keyboard, so no trackpad, stylus or writing pad is needed.

You reveal the working one step at a time, and every learner sees each line appear on their own device as you go. That matters more than it sounds: the back row reads the same line as the front row, and nobody is copying from a photograph of a whiteboard afterwards.

Ask the class to fill in a step

Write the whole solution — including the lines you want them to find — then click the number beside any line to hide it. Learners see a gap there and type that line themselves. You get their answers as they arrive, plus a percentage that were right, so you know whether to move on or go back a step.

Treat that percentage as a signal rather than a mark. It compares notation leniently, but two genuinely equivalent lines written in a different order can still read as different — the answers are listed beside it precisely so you can overrule it at a glance.

You can also plot a function straight onto the board, have AI draft the working for a problem as a starting point, and use your phone as an annotation pad to circle the bit everyone is stuck on.

Code Sandbox — four languages, nothing installed

A Code Sandbox runs learner code in the learner’s browser. There is no server executing anything, no account to create, and nothing to install on a school machine:

• Python 3.12 — with numpy, pandas, matplotlib, scipy and around 300 other packages available on demand. Plots appear under the output.
• SQL — a real SQLite database, created fresh on every run, with results shown as a table.
• R 4.6 — base R including plots.
• JavaScript — instant, with nothing to download at all.

Because each language is a self-contained runtime, a locked-down laptop, a Chromebook and a phone all behave the same way. The trade-off is the first run: Python fetches about 13 MB before it starts, R rather more. It caches afterwards, but it’s worth knowing before you set an R task for thirty devices on a slow connection.

Fill in the blanks, not the whole file

A blank page is intimidating and a finished program teaches nothing. So a sandbox task can be a working program with lines removed: you write the whole thing, click the line numbers you want taken out, and learners type those lines back into a program that already runs. The rest of the code gives them the context — they’re debugging their understanding of one idea, not fighting syntax for forty minutes.

It suits SQL especially well. Give them the schema and the seed data, remove the WHERE clause, and the exercise is the one thing you’re actually teaching.

Fourteen languages, chosen by the learner

Every learner-facing page — quizzes, discussions, activities, boards, sandboxes — is available in fourteen languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Arabic, with right-to-left layout where it’s needed.

The learner chooses, not you. Two people in the same room can read the same task in different languages while answering into the same board, which is the point: language shouldn’t decide who can join in. Trainer and admin screens stay in English.

This is genuinely useful well beyond language classes — bilingual settings, ESOL groups, and anywhere a learner’s reading language isn’t the language of instruction.

Where each one fits

Reach for a MathsBoard when the working is the lesson — deriving, rearranging, proving. Reach for a Code Sandbox when learners need to run something and see what happens. Both drop into an Interactive Lecture as a break, so you can present for ten minutes, pause for everyone to complete a step or fix a query, and carry on.

And all of it joins the same way everything else does: one QR code, no student accounts.