Education Technology

Get Out and #SpreadMathLove

Posted 06/02/2021 by Alison Steele, Senior Marketing Manager

Whether you’re ready to dive into outdoor activities or just want to dip your toes in the water, geocaching is a great, safe way to spring into this post-quarantine summer.

If you’re not familiar with geocaching, it’s essentially the world’s largest, constantly running treasure hunt. To play, you simply use GPS, and navigate to specific locations with “cleverly hidden containers” called geocaches. There are millions — yes, millions — of geocaches all around the world, and likely one within walking distance of your home. Once found, the containers have a logbook for you to sign and read and typically contain some sort of “treasure” (think a small trinket) that you can take and replace with your own for the next person to find. For more details on the ins and outs of geocaching, check out this blog, or read more on the Geocaching website.

This month, Texas Instruments (TI) and Geocaching launched a partnership to spread math love around the U.S. and, ultimately, the globe, through some supercute exclusive trackables. These trackables are small tokens that come in five different, fun “math buddy” designs:

  • Acutie on Duty
  • Buddies²
  • Infinitely in Love
  • Irrational Love of Pi
  • Far Out Fractals, Man


So how can you play along? Simple! You’ll need to create a Geocaching account, which is free on the Geocaching website. Then, there are three key ways to help spread math love:

  1. Before June 8, you can complete the form at geocaching.com/TIMathLove to request a trackable. If you are randomly selected to be among the first 2,000 people to receive one of the exclusive TI math buddy tokens, then you get to be the person who releases it into the world by hiding it in its first geocache. With this, you’ll get to set the goal of your individual trackable, and receive updates on its whereabouts for years to come.
  2. Once the trackables start making their way into geocaches, you can start hunting them down! Using the map on the promotion landing page, you can find where the nearest TI math buddy token is located. Then go out and find it, log it, and move it to another geocache spot to keep the math love flowin’.
  3. While you’re out geocaching, be sure to snap some pics of the math you notice in nature, or grab a selfie with your TI math buddy trackable, then share on your public Twitter or Instagram account with the tags #SpreadMathLove and #TICacheContest for a chance to win some awesome math love swag, including a TI graphing calculator.*

For teachers, geocaching can help engage students in a different way, and there’s even an online community dedicated to sharing ways you can incorporate geocaching into learning.

Now, grab your family or your students, or just get out on your own, and get geocaching!


*Terms and conditions apply. See drawing rules on the promotion landing page for details.



About the author: Alison Steele is the Senior Marketing Manager for TI Education Technology in North America. She has been helping #SpreadMathLove with Texas Instruments for seven years and has worked in education her whole career. A proud graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and lifetime Longhorn fan, Steele enjoys college football, a good beach and spending time with her family.