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A Calculating Web Site Could Ignite a New Campus 'Math War' -...

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Saved by 9 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-06-13


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Highlighted by kathycannon

on 2009-06-16 by kathycannon

The best content here is found near the end where professors recognize that tools are for calculating and presenting conceptual learning opportunities. WolframAlpha is powerful, but brave, clever faculty will figure out how to use it to take students further in their understanding and applications of math concepts.

Mr. Wolfram, a former child prodigy who earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology at age 20, said that using computers helped him get ahead of his colleagues when he was a young scholar.

“I’m a person who believes that at any given time, one should use the best tools available,” he said.

Highlighted by cairoteacher

Mr. Wolfram,

Highlighted by kathycannon

But Mr. Petrak also demonstrated for The Chronicle how easy it would be for students to cheat on their homework with the service. He opened WolframAlpha and entered a homework problem from his calculus course. The problem involved limits and square roots, and the service solved it easily. By clicking the link titled “show steps,” Mr. Petrak illustrated how students could write down those steps and pretend they understood the process when they had simply copied it.

Still, he said, the service also opens the door to teaching more advanced concepts. It shows graphical representations of the equation and introduces concepts he would not usually get to in an introductory course. “It puts the complex solutions in the same pane” as the simple answer, he said. “It’s really cool because you can actually start talking about it with students, and I usually wouldn’t have mentioned it.

Highlighted by cairoteacher

“I’m a person who believes that at any given time, one should use the best tools available,” he said.

Highlighted by kathycannon

believes that at any given time, one should use the best tools available,

Highlighted by kathycannon

“I suppose I have a personal experience that if you use more tools, you can get more done.”

Highlighted by kathycannon

He opened WolframAlpha and entered a homework problem from his calculus course. The problem involved limits and square roots, and the service solved it easily. By clicking the link titled “show steps,” Mr. Petrak illustrated how students could write down those steps and pretend they understood the process when they had simply copied it.

Highlighted by kathycannon

also opens the door to teaching more advanced concepts. It shows graphical representations of the equation and introduces concepts he would not usually get to in an introductory course.

Highlighted by kathycannon

WolframAlpha "packages features so that they’re a little bit more accessible, but I don’t see it as revolutionary,” Mr. Bressoud said. “Most math instructors now realize that the end-all and be-all of math instruction is not to give students algorithmic facility, but it really is to understand the mathematical ideas and understand how to use them.”

As Mr. Freedman, the physics instructor, put it: “The greatest challenges that science and math students face are conceptual, not computational, and neither calculators nor WolframAlpha can do much about that.”

Highlighted by cairoteacher

“It will make it possible for students to do different things than they did before, and it may require instructors to ask questions differently than they might have done in the past.”

Highlighted by kathycannon

conceptual, not computational

Highlighted by kathycannon