It's Thursday night and Garth and I had a pretty good presentation this morning. Right now we are listening to Dr. Wolfram talk about the work of his company, Wolfram. Dr. Wolfram has been showing the audience one of three projects he and his team completed, Mathmatica. What an amazing program. The flexibility and range of applications of this program is staggering. So what is Mathmatica? Well, here is my simplified answer...It solves and shows you math problems. That being said, using the software people can design moving shapes, test how shapes and computer code will act, create very complex movements (possibly of machines), etc.
Dr. Wolfram was quick to point out that he is not a teacher and did not design any of his software for educational use. BUT he does support using his programs to teach kids math and science. It is very refreshing to hear a keynote speaker at an educational conference own the fact he does not teach/work in a school. It becomes very frustrating when people spend an hour talking about the change that needs to happen in education and they do not even work directly with kids. Dr. Wolfram recognizes and addressed the fact that he builds software and supports the people that have ideas about how to use it in the classroom. Mathmatica and Wolframalpha.com will inevitably change how math is taught in schools. The hope is that teachers began to use a more creative, problem-based approach to teaching math. Otherwise students will solve all of their homework questions via sites like Wolframalpha, but they will not have any idea how to use these problems based in reality.
New Applications for wolframalpha: http://products.wolframalpha.com/iphone/
Other Applications: http://products.wolframalpha.com/mobile/
Genealogy and History: http://products.wolframalpha.com/personalapps/genealogyhistory.html
E-books: http://www.touchpress.com/
Dr. Wolfram was quick to point out that he is not a teacher and did not design any of his software for educational use. BUT he does support using his programs to teach kids math and science. It is very refreshing to hear a keynote speaker at an educational conference own the fact he does not teach/work in a school. It becomes very frustrating when people spend an hour talking about the change that needs to happen in education and they do not even work directly with kids. Dr. Wolfram recognizes and addressed the fact that he builds software and supports the people that have ideas about how to use it in the classroom. Mathmatica and Wolframalpha.com will inevitably change how math is taught in schools. The hope is that teachers began to use a more creative, problem-based approach to teaching math. Otherwise students will solve all of their homework questions via sites like Wolframalpha, but they will not have any idea how to use these problems based in reality.
New Applications for wolframalpha: http://products.wolframalpha.com/iphone/
Other Applications: http://products.wolframalpha.com/mobile/
Genealogy and History: http://products.wolframalpha.com/personalapps/genealogyhistory.html
E-books: http://www.touchpress.com/
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