Paul Abbott, a faculty member in the School of Physics at The University of Western Australia, wants to teach his students a tool that they can use to tackle real-world problems—not only in his physics and mathematics courses, but throughout their studies and into their professional careers. For him, Mathematica is that tool. Abbott uses Mathematica to build all of his courseware, from lecture slide shows and assignments to quizzes and exams. His students use Mathematica to visualize surfaces, explore concepts using interactive examples, hypothesize results, and check their work. He says Mathematica is an "immersive environment" that helps his students reach a higher level of understanding.

After talking with community college educators recently at the national AMATYC conference in Boston, I'm reminded, once again, that time is the most valuable commodity in a teaching setting. It takes time to plan a lesson for students, time to refine this lesson such that it has the most impact, and time to plan what technology will accompany a lesson and how to guide students through the process of using that technology. Any wrinkles with using the technology will greatly distract students from the course concept at hand. As a concrete example, community college faculty are used to explaining to students the four menus, and roughly eight steps, to visualize a function and its derivative using a calculator, which is a significant time investment. (The examples are from my own TI calculator I've kept all these years.) It seems that most community college educators know how powerful and useful Mathematica can be to support lectures or individual student projects. But this year, more than anything else, we talked about how Mathematica 8's new free-form input will reduce or eliminate a teacher's preparation time and will help students who are new users access Mathematica's powerful functionality immediately.

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.