About Us

HeyMath! Consultant: Ye

My experience with HeyMath has so far been a very pleasant one.

I think this job is perfect for those who

are bored of 3 years (or more) of undergraduate study and want to try something different
like travelling around especially in a mysterious land like India
are good at and enjoy teaching yet do not wish to be a teacher in school
have outstanding interpersonal skills and are good at explaining complex concepts
enjoy designing using computer
love curry and other Indian food

I think enough has been said by my colleagues about the city and the work itself. So I am just going to add a few more points they might have not included.

People

There are several different roles played in the office - tutors, animators, IT engineers etc.

Tutors

50% of the people in the office are in content development They are responsible for creating maths lessons/components, publishing questions and tests online, replying to teachers'/students' questions etc. Mathematicians, graphic artists and animators work together.

Usually, students from Cambridge will be working on the creative side. However from time to time we get various projects as well - currently, we are working to add some interactive maths games into our website. Also we are providing help and advice to a school in Singapore with the 2005 Singapore Mathematics Project Festival.

Other things we have been doing are:

John - making interesting introductions to a range of maths concepts using real-life examples or by other means.
Matt - working on interactive worksheets to do with transformations in a 2-dimensional coordinate system
Cristina - finalising one of our first few maths games and testing
Me - adapting some difficult maths concepts into the curriculum as enrichment
Other tutors work more with things like responding to teachers'/students' questions or making online test/assignment.
But the distribution of work is quite flexible - we respond to online questions from time to time and many lessons are made by other tutors than us as well.
Last but not the least, all tutors are responsible for QC (quality control) of other tutors' products (lessons, games etc.). In addition to spotting and correcting minor mistakes, we are trained to think from the view of the students or teachers to avoid any inappropriateness in the delivery of information.

Animators

Lessons and games are produced via Macromedia Flash.

In the very first few days, Matt and I were struggling with Macromedia Flash as neither of us had used that before in such deep extent. But gradually, we started to pick up this software and by now we are both happy with it and are able to make lessons on our own using Flash.

Usually the work is handed over from tutors to animators when it comes to the stage of implementation. However throughout the entire process, tutors need to be in good communication with their assigned animator.

Others

There are other people in the office doing various jobs etc.

For example, John has been work partially as a group leader of us - he keeps an eye on the schedule of all the lessons.