Viva@Matemática project: a different way to see math

Viva@Mat is a project developed by four Math teachers from the School of Industrial Studies and Management (ESEIG) that was born with the fundamental objective of engaging ESEIG students with different math backgrounds in Math challenging activities. Some of these activities were transformed into real palpable materials and others into small interactive ones, being the great majority of them proposed by ESEIG’ students themselves. This small project rapidly grew into something we didn’t expect – it did flow over the walls of our institution to the general involving community – specifically to pre-university schools through the Viva@Math Exhibits – Orange, Blue and Green (the fourth, the Purple one is still in development). Nowadays, Viva@Math Exhibits – the public face of the Project – are itinerant and have been travelling between several, and different institutions (pre-university schools, preparatory schools, libraries, among others), around ESEIG and IPP area of influence and having registered visitors/participants of all ages. In this article we will describe the Viva@Math Project, its different activities that are categorized in some “great groups” like Numerical Trivia, Logic Activities and Mental Calculation, Puzzles, Geometric Curiosities, Magic Tricks, among others, designed to challenge students to use the underlying logical-mathematical reasoning to any ordinary and everyday activity. We will give specific and concrete examples of some of the activities developed and, also, reproduce of the general stimulating feedback the Project receives from the enrolled “actors” (teachers, students and their relatives, institutions, among others). We feel that this Project has become a small “bridge” between the pre-university schools and Higher Education Institutions (HEI), in trying to shorten the “gap” between the institutions of different levels of education and bring them to work together.