What it's like to intern with HeyMath!
We're humming as we complete seven years...
There are 7 letters in HeyMath!
And Sapta Swaras means 7 octats
All opposite side numbers on a dice add up to 7
Buddha's 7 steps at birth took him to heaven
Pythagoreans called it the perfect number, 3 and 4
And rainbows have violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red
So, 7 is an interesting number by all accounts!
HeyMath! turned 7 on 07.14.07
The MSF and HeyMath! interaction (Or, how 18 year olds learnt to become content developers, instead of being Mall rats!)
Day 0:Jagdish: “Wonder if they will call me ‘uncle Jagdish’ – have never had ‘colleagues’ as young as this. They are barely out of high school and we are supposed to get them to do real work?”
Sushant: “Waiting at the airport to board the flight from Delhi to Chennai seemed like a mistake at that time…”
Mehak: “…a formal, impersonal atmosphere with people in suits and ties, work delegated and a stringent deadline imposed was what we all had imagined…”
Arjun: “… it was not with a little amount of trepidation that we landed our 18 year old selves on to the tarmac at Chennai airport. We were cynical and skeptical, believing the next 45 days to be a test… We believed ourselves to be subjects of naïve parental pressures borne of idealistic aspirations. Basically, we would have much preferred lolling about in our bedrooms back home than be perched upon stools in front of white screens”
Eliza: “…Looking at their work, I wondered what would be expected from me…I knew very basic Flash animation at that time. I thought I would not be able to stand up to their expectations…”
Day 15:
Jagdish: “These kids are quite uninhibited in their ideas – hmm, this might be an interesting experience”
Sushant: “My first impression about Heymath! was that it will be a company full of people obsessed with math and computers. People you wouldn't mind calling 'geeks'. But to my surprise and also to that of my friends, they turned out to be some of the coolest and very chilled out people we had ever come across. The company had a very relaxed yet forceful approach to their work.”
Mehak: “The wonderful thing was the fact that people here were so receptive to our ideas - however crazy they might have sounded.”
Eliza: “The workplace was very much different from what I had imagined. The friendly nature of people working here helped us to blend in freely. We were never asked for more than what we could give but at the same time these people made our work here interesting and challenging.”
Day 30:
Jagdish: “Now I have to read the major part of an 800 page Economics textbook – so that we can fuse this with Math lessons. Back to School, buddy!”
Sushant: “I loved the work which we were assigned to do. Blending the two most lovable and enthralling subjects, Mathematics and Economics for kids whom I don't even know or will ever come to know was a task in itself. But we enjoyed every moment from sitting and writing scripts for our lessons to explaining nitty-gritty’s of Economics to people around us and actually getting down and implanting and developing our own lesson, something we all are very proud of.”
Mehak: “The detailed process through which each lesson is conceived of and made has taught us that to make something good a lot of perseverance and hard work is required.”
Arjun: “…we were charged with projects to complete, ideas to be churned out, and deadlines to be met, etc. We languid beings were gently pushed out of our cocoons and made to do things constructive and viable.”
Day 45:
Jagdish: “This project was good – it pushed me to look at things from the perspective of an 18 year old, about what would really make an impact in a math lesson. And now I can go back to acting my age. Sigh!”
Santosh: It was a wonderful experience to bring out stuff like an electronic math lesson from these 18 yr olds- “Sushant, Mehak, Arjun, Eliza”. They all were equally good and cooperative in producing the lessons which encouraged me to guide them for producing good lessons through out their working period in HeyMath!
Sankar: It was a good experience for me to teach Flash to young students. They learned Flash very quickly and implemented their Flash skills in lessons. I learned some Hindi words from them while they were speaking Hindi with Santosh and Jagdish. I also liked being called Professor Sankar by Jagdish!
Sushant: ”The way people here have used technology to teach Math is actually commendable. I at some level was jealous of kids who actually got to learn Math using the content which the company developed”
Arjun: “The realization, at the end of it all, that we were actually able to add something to the process, as we refer to it, of creation of things not meant for us but for others was humbling, to say the least.”
Eliza: “I have not only learned more Flash animation than I already knew but also the art of looking at a lesson from a child's point of view. To end with, it was a great experience, one of the most memorable summers of my life… I am sure HeyMath! would go a long way, and one day manage to remove the fear of math.”
Mehak: “For us, "Mathematics" and not "Math" was all about a big fat colorless book filled with big numbers having no relation to the real world. The vision this company has for the future of classroom teaching is much needed and sharing that vision during our time here was the real motivation.”
Do you know?
Mathlet: A portmanteau of work Math and Applet, Mathlet is a web widget that can be plugged and played in different portals. The first product to have come out from Mathlet initiative is iHeyMath! iHeyMath! is a cool Mathlet that can be added to iGoogle homepage. iHeyMath! enables easy browsing of lessons specific to user’s grade and subject requirement. Keep watching for exciting new Mathlets to be released soon.
PRIME: Program from Raffles Institution for Math Enrichment is a new Online Math Challenge, developed in partnership with Singapore's leading school, Raffles Institution. PRIME consists of a series of in-depth Mathematics courses for students at the primary and secondary school level. Each course comprises online instruction, online worksheets and a final exam. A certificate is awarded on successful completion of each course. Currently, the users have 28 courses to choose from!!
HeyMath! goes e-Commerce: Buying HeyMath! products has become easy and instantaneous. Select your choice from various HeyMath! products and pay using your credit card. The payment is processed securely and your access details will be mailed immediately.
User Forums: Still in the early beta stage, this will enable new ways to discuss HeyMath! lessons
HeyMath! Junior: HeyMath! is all geared towards this new release and anytime before the end of this year HeyMath! junior should be available. You should then be able to enroll your 7 year olds to HeyMath!
Moodle integration: HeyMath! has successfully done the initial demo of integrating HeyMath! lessons into the popular Moodle application. Users can combine the power of Moodle and the high quality research-based content from HeyMath!
Raffles Institute to feature HeyMath at MOE ExCEL Fest 2007
This will feature Raffles Institution's use of 'HeyMath!' in building even greater interest for math among its high ability learners. Visitors to this booth will get to view real-life examples of activities and animated lessons, as well as how mathematical concepts are developed. Also featured are online assessment modules, interactive worksheets and the in-built progress tracking system. As a special treat, Raffles Institution will also be showcasing HeyMath! PRIME, a programme it jointly developed with HeyMath!
Teacher tools: We have enhanced the "Grapher" in the teacher tools section. The grapher now lets you draw quadratics in all 3 forms: factorised, completed square and the general form. You can also paste the graphs you have drawn using grapher in word documents or power points and print it as well.
HeyMath! & Backpack Size: Catholic High School, a government school for boys in Singapore has done away with math textbooks for Sec 3 and Sec 4 (equivalent to US grades 9 & 10). Students and teachers logon to the HeyMath! and their entire math curriculum and lessons are available in the HeyMath! portal.
Users: Our first user from Ecuador signed up this month. With the amalgamation of latest technology and our focus on reaching out to a larger audience, HeyMath! has recently come out with some fantastic special offers that has made it almost impossible for users to resist. Do get in touch with us to find out more about this.
The purpose of the new HeyMath! blog is to share all this and more with you. We hope to give you more insight into what happens behind the scene – the research, thinking, technology and creativity that goes into the lessons that we create. We welcome ideas and feedback from you and hope that this blog would serve as a forum for communicating with our users.
