This summer, 5 interns participated in MathHappens projects remotely from Las Vegas, the Chicago area, Knox County, IL, and Lake County, IL. In September, we started our fall cohort with 4 interns in Irving, TX, Edmond, OK, Knoxville,TN, and Appleton, WI. We have interns who are studying or have studied: math, math education, business, data science, economics, computer science, and
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Take and Make: T-Puzzles
The T-Puzzle is a very old puzzle and it comes in several versions. In the version we made, the width and height are the same. Jordan Varat cut a board with silhouettes as puzzles that we will send to our math rooms in Austin, Mankato and Albuquerque. Megan Do worked on the CAD files and created the printable silhouettes
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Knots for Everyone! Math Teachers Circle of Austin visit Pearl St.
We welcomed the Math Teacher’s Circle of Austin to our Austin location and workshop on Pearl Street Thursday September 28th. They brought the food (BBQ) and we brought knots, and knot tiles. The visit included a workshop tour that included 3d printing, laser cutting pythagorean dissections and more. Thanks to Megan Do who designed the knot tiles, Ella Basken who
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Make Education Forum 2023 Presentation: Avoiding scorch using two sided laser cutting.
The first 3 puzzle pieces are cut from one side using the low speed and a high power needed to cut through 1/4″ plywood. The black scorch has to be sanded or wiped away adding significantly to post laser treatments. One approach if your laser is not cutting through is to run a second pass. This results in more
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Take and Make: Smarty Cat
Smarty Cat was a toy from the 1950s. It’s not really a slide rule, but it does show you all the math facts from 2×2 to 9×9. As you go you need fewer and fewer numbers because 9×2 is already in as 2×9 for example. We are giving away sets where you can draw your own cat/mouse/ghost or whatever animal
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2023 Construct 3d Conference Team: Ella Basken and Jordan Varat
Update: Ella Basken created this Presi slideshow of her conference experience. Its great! At the Construct 3d 2023 conference in NY Ella and Jordan are presenting a variety of models and a poster about the use of these models to enhance mathematics education. You can contact Ella at: ebasken@utexas.edu and Jordan at: jordan@varatenterprises.com Ella is our 3d print expert and
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Professional Development: Bullock Field Trip and Workshop Visit
We had a great visit to the Pearl Street workshop and gallery today by professor Dawn Kidd, an Adjunct Instructor at Lamar University. Her students are preservice teachers who will be teaching deaf and hard of hearing students. They started with a workshop visit with Jordan where they learned how to make a heart – square- circle dissection model. Ella
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Partner Spotlight: Seattle Universal Math Museum Outreach
We have been sharing ideas, materials, CAD files and finished models with a variety of partners. The folks at SUMM, the Seattle Universal Math Museum has been bringing math activities to the greater Seattle area as well as attending teaching conferences and hosting events. These photos are exciting for us because SUMM partnered with a local makerspace, sourced and manufactured
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On the road: Pflugerville Makerpfest
Melissa Wilkinson and Megan Do were at the Pflugerville Public Library Maker Pfest Event June 3rd to share some of our favorite maker projects, including the brand new Spectre tile, puzzle a day, egg tangrams, cars with unusual wheels and more with this community just north of Austin. Unlike the old “new” tile, this one tessellates without a pattern and
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Partner Spotlight: Workshop visit with Kim Kinder from Cuba, MO
Kimberly Kinder is a high school math teacher who is really passionate about bringing new learning experiences for her students. She drove 12 hours to come to Austin because she’s really interested in making some of the models we have and in making her own. We are really excited about supporting her work. Kimberly not only selected some models and
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