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Modern technologies have become an integral part in our society and are increasingly shaping the teaching of mathematics at every level of education. In Austria, the academic school year 2021/22 will undergo an extensive digitalisation; all students who start secondary school will be equipped with a digital device. Our paper reports on anticipated concerns and benefits of mathematics teachers who are required to integrate technologies into teaching mathematics at the first year of secondary education. We conducted an exploratory interview study with secondary mathematics teachers before schools received their digital devices. The data was analysed with techniques based on grounded theory approaches. We discovered that for teachers the anticipated concerns and benefits were: (1) discrimination of students by technologies; (2) by using technologies, students may lose basic mathematical knowledge and skills; (3) individual and playful acquisition of new technological competencies by teachers; and (4) using technologies to enhance differentiation and individualisation in mathematics teaching. One of the key findings of our study is that mathematics teachers in Austria feel capable enough to integrate technologies into the teaching and learning of mathematics at the beginning of secondary education and do not express the need for further technical training. This finding contradicts previous studies and provides a starting point for future investigations.

Combining new educational approaches and educational technologies can make mathematics education more adaptable to pupils' needs in the 21st century. Our explorative educational study aimed to identify how learning settings and learning environments should be designed to facilitate synthesising flipped approaches to education and using GeoGebra. To discover how to combine flipped approaches and GeoGebra in mathematics education, we conducted a nine-month educational study at a Viennese secondary school. In our study, we focused on pupils' needs, as pupils are key to combining successfully new educational approaches and using technologies. Analysing our qualitative research data following design-based and grounded theory approaches indicates that the categories (a) clear task definition and task design, (b) feedback, (c) context and benefits, and (d) single-source learning environments are important for pupils when utilising GeoGebra for enhancing flipped education.

Persona development techniques are a well-established method to create relatable descriptions of representatives of target users of digital systems. In the field of education, research on learner characteristics has yielded comprehensive results that can help advance educational approaches. Nonetheless, these results often remain abstract and distant for researchers and practitioners. Personas offer a bridge to make this knowledge more accessible and to facilitate user-centred design processes. This study focuses on creating personas of mathematics school students to ease such accessibility. These personas are constructed based on an understanding of learners’ goals, needs, challenges and problems, joys, fears, feelings and emotions, and strategies. Data collection was conducted through a multifaceted approach, encompassing qualitative and quantitative data from web surveys, think-aloud protocols, and interviews. The target demographic comprised upper secondary school mathematics students in Austria. We found five distinct patterns of characteristics prevalent in this target group. The patterns of characteristics reflected by the personas complement the scientific body of knowledge obtained from traditional approaches investigating characteristics and needs of learners. In practical terms, these personas empower the development of user-centred digital systems, learning materials, and lessons, thus fostering an enriched educational experience for mathematics students.

This study aims to uncover some key elements of successful home-learning of mathematics, based on students' perceptions, during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer recommendations for mathematics learning beyond the crisis. Throughout our work, we aimed to examine students' reflections on mathematics learning and learning environments that assisted their ease of transition from in-school face-to-face learning to home-schooling during the COVID-19 isolation. In this paper, we will present how mathematics learning has changed for upper secondary school students in Austria and outline students' perspectives in relation to their new learning experiences during the period of school closures. Through the use of case study principles enhanced by some design-based research approaches, we were able to illustrate that (a) familiarity with the context, (b) problems or tasks as learning triggers, (c) mathematics learning as a social as well as individual process, and (d) perceived positive cost-benefit analysis of learning mathematics are key to students' learning success. Although these categories were key for the students when learning mathematics in home-schooling during the current crisis, these categories could be equally considered when education moves back to school or in mixed learning environments post COVID-19.

Recent developments in educational technology have led to a renewed interest in the utilisation of user-generated microgames for facilitating learning. The advantages and disadvantages of microgames which have been voluntarily created, modified, shared and used by users on open learning platforms to support learning are not yet clearly understood. The present study explores the strengths and weaknesses of user-generated microgames for assisting learning followed with some recommendations for the development and effective use of microgames from elementary teacher perspectives. This study is exploratory research conducted within the GeoGebra application with the participation of elementary school teachers from Indonesia. The study found that, on the one hand, user-generated microgames have multiple advantages to support learning mainly by their simplicity and short duration gameplay. On the other hand, the games have several disadvantages, especially due to the lack of content directly related to learning objectives and less interesting interfaces. It is recommended for users of open learning platforms to create more targeted microgames respecting a particular learning objective and for teachers to creatively connect games to learning for mastering knowledge, skills, or literacies.

Using ePortfolios in mathematics learning is a valuable way to visualise students' learning outcomes in student-driven learning. ePortfolios are typically a collection of finished or fixed artefacts. However, several new software applications offer the opportunity to incorporate the interactive and dynamic characters of mathematics and mathematics­ /earning outcomes. Utilising such new software applications could be further enhanced by using student-driven approaches to teaching such as flipped learning, which is one example of merging the Rotation and Flex models of blended learning. Our study aimed to investigate students' requirements of dynamic and interactive ePortfolio software and related approaches to teaching and learning using the principles of explorative case studies enhanced with the techniques of design-based research and grounded theory. Qualitative analysis of student data collected over seven months indicates that key requirements are (a) a customisable techno-mathematics learning environment, (b) a tool that can enable mathematics learning with different representations, and (c) a familiar and intuitive mathematics learning environment with a limited set of tools.

To further enhance its usability and better serve teachers' needs a new connected classroom technology, called GeoGebra Classroom was developed. in this paper, we outline the results of the potential uses of GeoGebra Classroom in mathematics teaching and learning. in our Design Research study, we utilized the combination of educational research with usability and user experience methodologies. We designed mathematics lesson sequences for teachers and students with the GeoGebra Classroom tool and employed online worksheets for classroom explorations. These lesson sequences were video recorded, teachers' dashboards screen recorded, and participants' work with the tool observed. Furthermore, we collected data with usability and user experience questionnaires, and these were evaluated and complemented with semi-structured user interviews. Besides outlining the results of this study, we present ideas on how to further the development of the GeoGebra Classroom online collaborative tool.

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) is effective in producing bulk ultrafine-grained and nanostructured materials with large densities of lattice defects. This field, also known as NanoSPD, experienced a significant progress within the past two decades. Beside classic SPD methods such as high-pressure torsion, equal-channel angular pressing, accumulative roll-bonding, twist extrusion, and multi-directional forging, various continuous techniques were introduced to produce upscaled samples. Moreover, numerous alloys, glasses, semiconductors, ceramics, polymers, and their composites were processed. The SPD methods were used to synthesize new materials or to stabilize metastable phases with advanced mechanical and functional properties. High strength combined with high ductility, low/room-temperature superplasticity, creep resistance, hydrogen storage, photocatalytic hydrogen production, photocatalytic CO2 conversion, superconductivity, thermoelectric performance, radiation resistance, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility are some highlighted properties of SPD-processed materials. This article reviews recent advances in the NanoSPD field and provides a brief history regarding its progress from the ancient times to modernity. Abbreviations: ARB: Accumulative Roll-Bonding; BCC: Body-Centered Cubic; DAC: Diamond Anvil Cell; EBSD: Electron Backscatter Diffraction; ECAP: Equal-Channel Angular Pressing (Extrusion); FCC: Face-Centered Cubic; FEM: Finite Element Method; FSP: Friction Stir Processing; HCP: Hexagonal Close-Packed; HPT: High-Pressure Torsion; HPTT: High-Pressure Tube Twisting; MDF: Multi-Directional (-Axial) Forging; NanoSPD: Nanomaterials by Severe Plastic Deformation; SDAC: Shear (Rotational) Diamond Anvil Cell; SEM: Scanning Electron Microscopy; SMAT: Surface Mechanical Attrition Treatment; SPD: Severe Plastic Deformation; TE: Twist Extrusion; TEM: Transmission Electron Microscopy; UFG: Ultrafine Grained

Metallic foils are crucial to many applications ranging from printed circuit boards, aviation, aerospace, packaging, photovoltaics to batteries. In these applications they are often part of multifunctional composites, for which mechanical integrity is a prerequisite for the functionality. To ensure precise simulations and lifetime prediction, exact numerical material models are needed. In this work, material parameters of the Lemaitre-Chaboche model were fitted for electrodeposited copper foils. By using nanoindentation and microstructural characterisation, good agreement with literature was achieved. Additionally, it was found that the Tabor rule to estimate yield stress from indentation may not be applicable for metallic foils.