I just visited Washington, DC, and I find myself returning with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. Did this have something to do with the progression from mild rain to what could be the first sunny, summer days of the year? Or seeing the nation's capitol in person? Partially, yes. But the larger factor was attending the 2009 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Conference, and, you guessed it, talking about Mathematica and mathematics education for several days! I've attended five NCTM conferences over my ten years with Wolfram Research, and I always find the teachers' enthusiasm contagious. They constantly look for new ways to inspire their students, while at the same time building a strong foundation in mathematics. Teachers usually have clever ways to share information and spend countless hours trying new ideas and new presentation styles.

Mathematica has long been used by university-level faculty and researchers for work in math, physics, engineering, and many other fields. Good at everything from creating class documents and lab assignments to analyzing and visualizing data collected during experiments, Mathematica has become the software of choice for millions of academic researchers, faculty, and students because it is an all-in-one system that combines powerful computing and visualization capabilities with sophisticated documentation and presentation tools. But in my years of working with universities as Wolfram Research's Academic Program Manager, I've come to realize that many students who will become future high school teachers aren't using Mathematica in their math and science education classes. Why is that? Some have told me that they heard somewhere along the line that Mathematica was too difficult to learn and use. Others had assumed that it was too powerful for their needs, or not completely applicable to the subjects they would be teaching. But those that do take a closer look at Mathematica are usually amazed by what they see.

Each release of Mathematica brings with it powerful new tools that can be applied to an ever-widening range of fields, so it's no surprise that a great many faculty members at all levels choose Mathematica as the tool around which to base their curricula. My first introduction to the software came during my undergraduate education when I took a differential equations course. As my professor went through the syllabus and explained what topics we would cover that semester, she also mentioned that we would be using Mathematica and showed some examples of what it could do. Having never used mathematical technology more sophisticated than a graphing calculator, I did admittedly have a bit of a rocky start with the language and syntax. I remember my professor spending a lecture period going over the basics of how to enter input and perform computations, but I decided to dismiss all that advice and just figure it out myself---which seemed to be a good idea at the time. I probably should have paid closer attention to my professor's tutorial, because I soon became frustrated at what seemed like a very rigid language. As I investigated further---mostly by looking at all the examples in the documentation---I quickly realized that by learning a few simple rules one could effectively harness the program and produce powerful results. Ultimately it was Mathematica's consistent language design that got me excited about learning more.