 Success StoriesSuccess StoriesBringing Laughter to Calculus with MathtoonsFriday, October 5, 2012
 ‘I HATE MATH!’ is a phrase that has been shouted in frustration throughout space and time so often that a Super Team of educational animators, screenwriters, experience designers and teachers has finally been assembled to get to the square root of the problem and fix it for good! After hearing "math sucks!" one too many times from her students, Kristin Garn of Kelowna, BC, decided to create Mathtoons Media Inc. Using games, social media, music, wild characters, mnemonics (memory aids), zany animation and—most importantly—humour, Mathtoons was created to help students work through major math neuroses while simultaneously vanquishing boredom from the classroom. Mathtoons is an educational technology company that delivers engaging math lessons designed specifically for today's digital learners studying upper-level math. They create 21st-century teaching tools, including mobile apps and online content, that combine the newest digital tools with the most recent educational research to connect students and teachers to math topics. Founded in 2011, Mathtoons is a Venture Acceleration Program client with Accelerate Okanagan (AO), a tenant at the Kelowna Innovation Centre, and takes part in the BCIC Mentor Program. Kristin Garn, Director of Mathtoons Media Inc., said about the Accelerate Okanagan programs, “The mentors are amazing! Without them, we wouldn’t have a path right now. They helped us put a process to our vision and really made us think about and define our market segments—which was amazingly important at the beginning. Then to start thinking about the channels to those market segments. It was a really purposeful process.” 2012 was a big year for Mathtoons. In March, it won the entrepreneurship@AO competition. In May, the company launched its Logarithms Lite app in the iTunes store and in August, celebrated its 10,000th “Like” on Facebook. Since then, Mathtoons has teamed up with a large New York marketing agency to design the launch campaign for their upcoming ThUMP app series and has secured Government of Canada funding to develop the framework for a digital math practice workbook. Tweet it up at @mathtoons Tagged as: mathtoons, Accelerate Okanagan, venture acceleration program |
