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Education & Academic

Attention Teachers and Educators—Good News!

The Wolfram Demonstrations Project has newly organized its K--12 interactive content to fit United States Common Core State Standards. Engagement, exploration, discovery---these are the staples of good education. Giving students the freedom to be curious and the tools to satisfy that curiosity helps develop independent thinkers and confident problem-solvers. With the Demonstrations Project, students can visualize, manipulate, and explore the very principles that are being taught in the classroom. Teachers can enrich their lesson plans with cutting-edge and engaging content by exploring the Demonstrations database by grade level and Common Core Standard.
Wolfram Blog Team
Education & Academic

Mathematica Summer Camp 2013 Comes to an End

Thirty-three extremely intelligent high school students gathered at Bentley University July 7-19 to participate in our second annual Mathematica Summer Camp. The program lasted two weeks, and within this small window of time, students created their very own Mathematica projects. At the end of the camp, students presented these projects to their peers, camp instructors, and Stephen Wolfram. Projects ranged from games created in Mathematica to a Demonstration of the "Wavefunction and Probability Density of a Coupled Quantum Harmonic Oscillator." These projects will be posted to the Wolfram Demonstrations Project here, adding to the great work of those from 2012!
Crystal Fantry, Education Content Manager
Best of Blog

Is There Any Point to the 12 Times Table?

My government (I'm in the UK) recently said that children here should learn up to their 12 times table by the age of 9. Now, I always believed that the reason why I learned my 12 times table was because of the money system that the UK used to have---12 pennies in a shilling. Since that madness ended with decimalization the year after I was born, by the late 1970s when I had to learn my 12 times table, it already seemed to be an anachronistic waste of time.
Jon McLoone, Director, Technical Communication & Strategy
Education & Academic

Registration Is Open for the Mathematica Summer Camp 2013

It’s that time of year again! Time to apply for the Mathematica Summer Camp 2013! The camp is being held at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, July 7–19. Students will have the opportunity to learn Mathematica’s computing language, work with Wolfram mentors, and interact with other students with similar interests. By the end of camp, each student will have created his or her very own Mathematica program! Last year the camp was a great success, and students worked on a variety of projects, from modeling diseases to stereographic projection of platonic solids.
Crystal Fantry, Education Content Manager
Education & Academic

Announcement: Our First CBM Country

I'm very excited to announce that computerbasedmath.org has found the first country ready for our completely new kind of math education: it's Estonia. (...and here’s the press release). I thought Estonia could be first. They are very active on using technology (first to publish cabinet decisions immediately online, first to include programming in their mainstream curriculum), have ambition to improve their (already well respected) STEM aptitude and lack the dogma and resistance to change of many larger countries. There aren't so many countries with all those characteristics. In our first Estonia project we will work with them to rewrite key years of school probability and statistics from scratch. This is an area that's just crazy to do without a computer, even harmful. It's an area that's only come to the fore since computers because it only makes sense with lots of data. No-one in real life does these hand analyses or works with only 5 data points, so why do we make our students? Why get students emulating what computers do so much better (computing) rather than concentrate on imaginative thinking, analysis and problem-solving that students ought to be able to do so much better even than today's computers?
Conrad Wolfram
Education & Academic

Wolfram Research and American Education Week

This week is American Education Week (November 11–17), and in a very fundamental way, our goal as a company is to improve educational standards and accessibility around the world with our technology. For over 20 years, Wolfram Research has been at the forefront of combining technology with education. It started with Mathematica and grew with Wolfram|Alpha, mobile apps, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, Wolfram SystemModeler, and much more. From simple elementary math to highly complex physics, Wolfram's tools are used not only around the nation, but around the whole world. Next year marks the 25th anniversary of Mathematica. Today, Mathematica is a staple at both research universities and smaller liberal arts colleges. In fact, Mathematica has been adopted by many school systems throughout the country, including SUNY, CUNY, and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MnSCU). We've partnered with MnSCU to make Mathematica available to Minnesota public high schools through an outreach program. And the government of Panama, having recognized the importance of investing in its future, has recently focused on teaching Mathematica to professors, researchers, and students in all computer-accessible high schools and universities countrywide.
Crystal Fantry, Education Content Manager
Education & Academic

The Wolfram Education Portal Is Here!

Teachers, are you looking for a new way to integrate technology into your classroom? How about through a dynamic textbook or pre-generated lesson plans? Students, are you looking for some extra help or practice in your classes? How about using interactive demonstrations and widgets to help understand the concepts you are learning? The Wolfram Education Portal is the answer for students and teachers alike! We are happy to announce the launch of the free Beta version of the Wolfram Education Portal. The portal comes equipped with a dynamic and interactive textbook, lesson plans aligned to the common core standards, and many other supplemental materials for your courses, including Wolfram Demonstrations, widgets, and videos. The Education Portal currently contains full materials for Algebra and partial materials for Calculus, but will continue to grow and improve with your comments and feedback.
Wolfram Blog Team
Education & Academic

The First Computer-Based Math Education Summit

Having worked on content development for computer-based math over the past few months, I am excited to share a quick report on our lively summit at The Royal Institution. The purpose was to address the question "In an era of ubiquitous computing, how should we rebuild math education from the ground up, to keep pace with and drive progress in the real world?" Attendees included people from government, education, assessment, industry, technology, STEM, and publishing, which I believe proved to make a very interesting crowd. The talks from speakers were insightful as anticipated and, at times, amusing; however, what I enjoyed most were the natural discussions and debates that happened after these talks and throughout the summit.
Jackie Tran, Courseware Author
Education & Academic

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Use Mathematica to Collaborate with High Schools

After a few meetings during the past few weeks with Mark Thomas, Software Contracts Specialist for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MnSCU), Wolfram and MnSCU have finalized a plan that will provide Mathematica to Minnesota public high schools through a new outreach program. Any of the roughly 400 public high schools in Minnesota can request a license for Mathematica at MnSCU-offer@wolfram.com, and Wolfram will provide up to five local licenses per school for the duration of the 2011–2012 academic year. Wolfram and MnSCU intend to extend this partnership in the future.
Kelvin Mischo, Enterprise Accounts Manager, Academic Sales
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