Story By: Ana Lacasa, Sub-Editor:  Joana Mihajlovska, Agency: Newsflash

This Colombian engineer and teacher has broken the Guinness World Record for the largest online maths class with over 213,000 students.

Julio Alberto Rios, 47, hosted the class called ‘Maths applied to other subjects’ on 7th December.

Rios is known as ‘Julioprofe’ on his YouTube channel which he created in 2009 and now boasts of an army of 4.4 million subscribers.

Rios conducted the class from his native Colombia, but was able to break the record through a partnership with the Education Secretariat of Jalisco in Mexico.

The online class received a record-breaking 213,568 students at any given time.

Students heard Rios speak about maths and how they can be applied to other fields such as social or natural sciences, music, art, technology, and others.

The Jalisco Secretariat of Education issued a statement celebrating their record and thanked Rios for his part in the process.

During his class, the 47-year-old teacher talked about the importance of understanding mathematics saying: “Maths knowledge is similar to a set of tools or a toolbox which accompany us in life. Some are simple, some are more sophisticated, but at the end of the day, they are all useful.”

Rios added his mission is to make people “fall in love” with knowledge and called teachers the real influencers in the world.

Rios had made a previous unsuccessful attempt at conducting the largest in-person class, but was unable to obtain the record after some participants were disqualified.

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