This summer, four students from Texas State University and the Breakthrough Central Texas program, Alexa Hernandez-Lopez (Biology), Jaiden Suda (Marketing), Dayanara Renteria (Biology), and Kriti Magar (Nursing), joined MathHappens for a summer internship program. Over the course of the summer, these students had the opportunity to engage in multiple aspects of the MathHappens internship experience. Aspects of the internship included,
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AISD Austin High Math Department Offsite at Pearl St. HQ
Matt Hertel, Jordan Varat and Tyson Geigenmiller hosted Ms. Mardi Nott’s Austin High math department offsite meeting. The AISD math teachers toured our facility and learned about our laser and how we use technology to create physical math models that promote math literacy. The teachers left with new ideas on how to communicate math effectively and with new models to
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2023 MathFest in Tampa Team: Lauren Siegel, Matt Hertel, Naila Hajiyeva, and Stefany Espinoza
We are really excited about MathFest 2023! MathHappens Foundation has a booth — please come and see us! We are giving away a variety of models that will not only be fun for you, but we hope will inspire you to have fun with others talking about interesting math. The whole team in Austin has pitched in to prepare for
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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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Volunteer Event: Google
Kylie Schmidt, account manager at Google in Austin arranged for a volunteer group of nine to visit our new location to build some models with our team members. On hand from MathHappens were Georgia Thomsen, Melissa Wilkinson, Alexa Hernandez, Jaiden Suda, Megan Do, Tyson Geigenmiller, Stefany Espinoza and Jordan Varat. Our time together included a visit to the workshop where
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Its open! MathHappens @ The Millenium Youth Entertainment Complex
What and who is at the Millenium Math Area? MathHappens Team: Alexa Hernandez-Lopez, Jaiden Suda, Kriti Magar, and Dayanara Renteria launched this space with mentor Matt Hertel. All our staff are taking spots in the rotation. We also feature a carpet to play with a Jumbo Blocks Jr. set, a Julia Robinson Math Festival maze mat, optical illusions for photos,
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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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Take and Make: The new Spectre Tiles for Math Teacher’s Circle of Austin
Professor Jennifer Austin hosts this great group and some of our favorite friends were in attendance. The plan was to have teachers put together a tabletop magnetic whiteboard display of the Einstien or Hat Tile discovered in March this year, but …. Surprise! another tile, called the Spectre that does not have to be reflected to tessellate was discovered just
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