October 8, 2019
Ankit Naik, Sales Engineer, Wolfram MathCore
Matteo Fasano, Postdoctoral Researcher, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
How can you make teaching come alive and be more engaging? For many educators, the answer turns out to be not so much a single solution, but rather a set of tools that can vary according to subject and even by student. So today, I want to add something new to the pedagogical toolkit: Wolfram Virtual Labs.
Wolfram Virtual Labs are open educational resources in the form of interactive courseware that are used to explain different concepts in the classroom. Our ambition is to provide an easy way to study difficult concepts and promote student curiosity.
For this post, I spoke with Dr. Matteo Fasano about his experience with using Virtual Labs as a course complement in the masters’ courses in which he acts as a teaching assistant. He also told me why and how he supported the Wolfram MathCore group to develop the CollegeThermal Virtual Labs (now available) and how they can help teachers or instructors make learning more engaging.
September 17, 2019 — Brian Wood, Lead Technical Writer, Document and Media Systems
Our interactive Multiparadigm Data Science (MPDS) course has been up at Wolfram U for over a month now, and we’re pretty satisfied with the results so far. Hundreds of people have started the course—including students from our first Data Science Boot Camp, who joined us at Wolfram headquarters for a three-week training camp. Thanks to the success of the boot camp, we have also had several projects submitted for advanced MPDS certification, which will soon be available within the interactive course.
But what exactly does it mean to be a practitioner of MPDS? And how might the multiparadigm approach improve my computational projects? To find out, I decided to try this free course for myself.
September 12, 2019 — Stephen Wolfram
The Next Big Step for Wolfram|Alpha
Wolfram|Alpha has been a huge hit with students. Whether in college or high school, Wolfram|Alpha has become a ubiquitous way for students to get answers. But it’s a one-shot process: a student enters the question they want to ask (say in math) and Wolfram|Alpha gives them the (usually richly contextualized) answer. It’s incredibly useful—especially when coupled with its step-by-step solution capabilities.
But what if one doesn’t want just a one-shot answer? What if one wants to build up (or work through) a whole computation? Well, that’s what we created Mathematica and its whole notebook interface to do. And for more than 30 years that’s how countless inventions and discoveries have been made around the world. It’s also how generations of higher-level students have been taught.
But what about students who aren’t ready to use Mathematica yet? What if we could take the power of Mathematica (and what’s now the Wolfram Language), but combine it with the ease of Wolfram|Alpha?
Well, that’s what we’ve done in Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition.
August 15, 2019 — Abrita Chakravarty, Training and Development Specialist, Wolfram U
A few weeks back, we announced Wolfram U’s latest open online course: Multiparadigm Data Science (MPDS). This course gives a hands-on introduction to basic concepts of data science through a multiparadigm approach—using various types of data, modern analytical techniques, automated machine learning and a range of interfaces for communicating your data science results. Our goal is to increase your understanding of data science while allowing you to take advantage of multiparadigm insights—whether you’re a newcomer working on a simple problem or an expert using well-established methods.
As the content creator and instructor, I’d like to provide some background on myself and my approach to the MPDS course. Beyond doing data science, I’ve found that multiparadigm principles make both teaching and learning more effective. In this post, I’ll give insight to the design of the course—the main goals, what topics are included and how to use the built-in interactivity to get the most out of your experience.
April 9, 2019 — Alec Titterton, CBM Content Development Manager, European Sales
Wolfram Research is pleased to announce further collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation as part of supporting makers across the world through education. A collection of 10 Wolfram Language projects has been launched on the foundation’s projects site. These projects range from creating weather dashboards to building machine learning classifiers to using AI for facial recognition. The goal is to put the power of computational intelligence into the hands of anyone who wants access—democratizing the skills that will increasingly be needed to innovate and discover what is possible with modern computation.
By providing easy-to-follow, step-by-step tutorials that result in a finished, functioning piece of software, Wolfram aims to lower the barrier of entry for those who wish to get immediately started programming, building and making. Projects can be completely built on the Raspberry Pi or within a web browser in the Wolfram Cloud.
January 17, 2019 — Kathy Bautista, Senior Sales Initiatives Manager, Academic Sales
As many teachers make the transition back into classes after the holidays, quite a few have plans to update lessons to include segments that introduce data science concepts. Why, you ask?
According to a LinkedIn report published last week, the most promising job in the US in 2019 is data scientist. And if you search for the top “hard skills” needed for 2019, data science is often in the top 10.
Data science, applied computation, predictive analytics… no matter what you call it, in a nutshell it’s gathering insight from data through analysis and knowing what questions to ask to get the right answers. As technology continues to advance, the career landscape also continues to evolve with a greater emphasis on data—so data science has quickly become an essential skill that’s popping up in all sorts of careers, including engineering, business, astronomy, athletics, marketing, economics, farming, meteorology, urban planning, sociology and nursing.
December 13, 2018 — Jesika Brooks, Blog Editor - EduTech, Public Relations
A version of this post was originally published on the Tech-Based Teaching blog as “Computational Lesson-Planning: Easy Ways to Introduce Computational Thinking into Your Lessons.” Tech-Based Teaching explores the intersections between computational thinking, edtech and learning.
Sometimes a syllabus is set in stone. You’ve got to cover X, Y and Z, and no amount of reworking or shifting assignments around can change that. Other factors can play a role too: limited time, limited resources or even a bit of nervousness at trying something new.
But what if you’d like to introduce some new ideas into your lessons—ideas like digital citizenship or computational thinking? Introducing computational thinking to fields that are not traditionally part of STEM can sometimes be a challenge, so feel free to share this journey with your children’s teachers, friends and colleagues.
November 20, 2018 — Brian Wood, Lead Technical Writer, Document and Media Systems
Thanks to the Wolfram Language, English teacher Peter Nilsson is empowering his students with computational methods in literature, history, geography and a range of other non-STEM fields. Working with a group of other teachers at Deerfield Academy, he developed Distant Reading: an innovative course for introducing high-level digital humanities concepts to high-school students. Throughout the course, students learn in-demand coding skills and data science techniques while also finding creative ways to apply computational thinking to real-world topics that interest them.
In this video, Nilsson describes how the built-in knowledge, broad subject coverage and intuitive coding workflow of the Wolfram Language were crucial to the success of his course:
November 8, 2018 — Jamie Peterson, Technical Programs Manager, Wolfram U
Join Wolfram U for Wolfram Technology in Action: Applications & New Developments, a three-part web series showcasing innovative applications in the Wolfram Language.
Newcomers to Wolfram technology are welcome, as are longtime users wanting to see the latest functionality in the language.
September 18, 2018 — Devendra Kapadia, Kernel Developer, Algorithms R&D
Today I am proud to announce a free interactive course, Introduction to Calculus, hosted on Wolfram’s learning hub, Wolfram U! The course is designed to give a comprehensive introduction to fundamental concepts in calculus such as limits, derivatives and integrals. It includes 38 video lessons along with interactive notebooks that offer examples in the Wolfram Cloud—all for free. This is the second of Wolfram U’s fully interactive free online courses, powered by our cloud and notebook technology.
This introduction to the profound ideas that underlie calculus will help students and learners of all ages anywhere in the world to master the subject. While the course requires no prior knowledge of the Wolfram Language, the concepts illustrated by the language are geared toward easy reader comprehension due to its human-readable nature. Studying calculus through this course is a good way for high-school students to prepare for AP Calculus AB.
