Wolfram Offers Next Innovation in Education Technology with Wolfram Education Portal

Champaign, Illinois–January 18, 2012–Wolfram today announced the launch of the Wolfram Education Portal, providing teachers and students alike with a new way to integrate technology into learning.

The Wolfram Education Portal, available at education.wolfram.com, comes equipped with dynamic teaching tools and materials such as an interactive textbook, lesson plans aligned to the common core standards, and many other supplemental materials for courses, including Demonstrations, widgets, and videos, all built by Wolfram education experts.

“Wolfram has long been a trusted name in education, as the creators of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Demonstrations Project,” says Crystal Fantry, Senior Education Specialist at Wolfram. “We have created some of the most dynamic teaching and learning tools available, and the Wolfram Education Portal offers the best of all of these technologies to teachers and students in one place.”

The Education Portal, currently in Beta, contains full materials for Algebra and partial materials for Calculus, but will continue to grow and improve. Wolfram plans to expand the Education Portal to include community features, problem generators, web-based course apps, and the ability to create personalized content.

Wolfram developed the interactive textbook by working with the CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the mission to produce free and open-source K-12 materials aligned to state curriculum standards and customized to meet student and teacher needs. The available Algebra textbook takes CK-12′s Algebra I FlexBook and makes it dynamic with Wolfram technologies, including Wolfram|Alpha widgets, Wolfram|Alpha links, interactive Demonstrations created in Mathematica, and the Computable Document Format (CDF).

Sample widget

Through the Connect All Schools interactive website, schools share stories using text, photo and video about how they are currently connecting their students to the rest of the world through such activities as student and teacher exchanges, global issues curricula, video-conferences and “Exchanges 2.0,” the use of new media and communications technologies to expand, extend, and deepen international cross-cultural exchanges.

Not seeing the video?
Direct link to YouTube video introduction to “Connect All Schools”

“Despite the importance of global competency and engagement, US teachers are not aware of the many options for introducing their students to global issues, world languages, online international interaction and physical exchanges,” said iEARN-USA Executive Director Ed Gragert, who is spearheading the project. “By reading stories of what schools are already doing, additional teachers across the country can learn about specific examples and work with partner organizations to replicate the successes around the country.”

“Imagine the possibilities for our students to learn WITH the world, instead of just about it,” said Dr. Gragert. “Research has clearly demonstrated that authentic interaction with the world’s students across the curriculum results in enhanced learning, improved test scores and a heightened motivation to learn.”

For more information on this exciting initiative or to share your story, please visit: www.connectallschools.org

Sylvia

Sylvia

More from Bonnie:
Last week some of us were treated to a sharing of the National Broadband Map - this was from the office of Karen Cator at the Dept of Education and they shared data on the schools at CoSN.

The map is also a tool for your use. Here is what you can do with it. You can go to your school board and demonstrate broadband use in your community. You can share your speed and help to fill out the National Broadband Map. In case you missed it, it is a kind of citizen transparency project.

It is an amazing tool and the website includes some great resources (like this workshop plan and presentation) to help use and analyze the data. The Dept of Education and NTIA collaborated on that presentation.

Consumer Broadband Test vs Advertised (pink is less than advertised, green is as advertised, dark green is more than advertised)

Analyzing the Data
Use the tools on the map to rank an area by a specific broadband attribute, You can generate summaries of broadband availability for a given area and download reports containing popular statistics. This should be helpful to your learning community, your school board, and local consumers.

Some other ideas:

• Use the rank tool to compare broadband availability in different areas.
• Generate a national list of states, counties, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), Congressional Districts, census designated places or Universal Service Fund (USF) study areas by broadband speed, technology, number of broadband providers or demographic information.
• Generate ranked lists within a state, including by county, census designated place, Congressional District, state legislative district, MSA and USF study area.
• Use this tool to generate an overview of broadband availability for any state, county, state legislative district, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Universal Service Fund (USF) study area, or Native Nations.
• View and download popular reports in PDF form such as: Broadband Availability in Urban vs. Rural Areas, Number of Providers by Speed Tier, Access to Broadband Technology by Speed

Why don’t we know this already?
Measuring Internet access has been tricky for years. Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation explains that detailed network data about speeds, latency, jitter, and more used to be in the public domain until the government-run NSFnet was privatized in the earlier 1990s. Today, though, it’s hard to know what speeds ISPs are actually offering (knowing what speeds they advertise, by contrast, is simple).

M-Lab, a partnership between the New America Foundation and Google meant to measure Internet connections, has given Google two years worth of actual broadband connection data, as measured by users. That’s more than 300TB of data, which Google has imported into its Public Data Explorer for easy viewing and analysis. The results are remarkable.

M-Lab has distributed testing tools for two years now and its servers have recorded data on the results. One of the most basic measurements is pure speed, measured in megabits per second. When these real-world speeds are charted on a map, they make Internet speed differences obvious in a way often obscured by simple lists and numbers.

M-Lab is one of many projects exploring ways to help users more clearly understand the performance of their broadband connections. If you’re interested in exploring further, here are more tools and resources from the FCC, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and more.

There is a quick and painless way to gain this valuable insight – but you have to DO IT NOW!

Participate in Speak Up 2010 through Fri., Jan 21, 2011

Join with educators from across the country who use the Speak Up Surveys to identify how their students, teachers, administrators and parents want to use technology for learning, communications and collaboration. Participating in the Speak Up Surveys is free and 100% confidential.

Last year, over 5,757 schools and 1,215 districts participated in the Speak Up Surveys. All these districts got terrific customized data about how their stakeholders view technology, and how they compare to other districts. This is the data YOU need to support your technology vision, and there is no other way to get it.

It’s easy to get started, visit the Speak Up website to register your district (or school). Then encourage your students, parents, teachers and administrators to take the online survey. To help you out, check out the tools and tips on the Project Tomorrow website.

Go!

Sylvia

Join with educators from across the country who use the Speak Up Surveys to identify how their students, teachers, administrators and parents want to use technology for learning, communications and collaboration. Participating in the Speak Up Surveys is free and 100% confidential.

Last year, over 5,757 schools and 1,215 districts participated in the Speak Up Surveys. All these districts got terrific customized data about how their stakeholders view technology, and how they compare to other districts. This is the data YOU need to support your technology vision, and there is no other way to get it.

It’s easy to get started, visit the Speak Up website to register your district (or school). Then encourage your students, parents, teachers and administrators to take the online survey. To help you out, check out the tools and tips on the Project Tomorrow website.

Sylvia

Sylvia

Do you want to take your students on an adventure to save the world’s oceans that they’ll never forget? An adventure that will empower them through knowledge and activism? An adventure that doesn’t cost a penny? Well, your holiday wish has come true! Stand for Tomorrow is an organization that will provide educational multimedia content on plastic’s impact on the ocean’s that is free to students and teachers! The best part? Your students will have the opportunity to participate virtually with researchers on expeditions, explore the oceans through the eyes of expert scuba divers, and acquire knowledge and experience that they would have never been able to access before. So what are you waiting for! Sign up for our monthly newsletter where we will update you on the latest news and keep you informed of our upcoming release of free lesson plans. Follow us online: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube.

Stand for Tomorrow aims to create environmental stewardship through eco-awareness and education. Students are the leaders of tomorrow and Stand for Tomorrow is focusing on educational content to educate, excite, and involve students to Stand for Tomorrow that they want and deserve.

Stand for Tomorrow will create K-12 lesson plans focused on pollution and it’s impact on marine ecosystems that demonstrate the impact that pollution has on our oceans with a focus on the current failure to prevent plastic from impacting marine ecosystems. The curriculum will allow students to understand elements that contribute to this environmentally destructive issue and how they will be able to make a difference. The curriculum will incorporate critical education skills for today’s 21st century learner as well as to cover mathematics, history, geography, and science. Stand for Tomorrow will support their educational efforts with multimedia and a documentary to reach a larger audience and provide an more in depth look at the impact of plastic on marine ecosystems and subsequently it’s impact on our larger eco-system, Earth.

Sylvia

Young Adult Library Services Association Offers Mini-Grants for Teen Tech Week

Teen Tech Week is designed to help teens learn to become efficient and ethical users of technology, especially in a library setting. Teen Tech Week also encourages teens to recognize that librarians are qualified, trusted professionals in the field of information technology. Teen Tech Week 2011 will be celebrated March 6-12 with a theme of “Mix and Mash @ your library.”

Through funding from the Margaret A. Edwards Trust, the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, will award up to ten Teen Tech Week mini-grants, consisting of $450 in cash and $50 worth of Teen Tech Week products, to YALSA members who create a reading program that incorporates technology.

Visit the ALA Web site for complete program information, mini-grant rules, resources, and much more!

It’s designed to help you understand what Facebook is and how to use it safely. With it, you will be better informed and able to communicate with young Facebook users in your life more effectively. That’s important because 1) if something goes wrong, we want our children to come to us and 2) as the Internet becomes increasingly social and mobile, a parent’s guidance and support are ever more key to young people’s well-being in social media and technology.

If you are a teacher teaching Internet Safety, it’s important to get parents on your side – the side of safe and knowledgeable use. Sharing this kind of information proactively with parents BEFORE a crisis is crucial.

Besides this new Parents’ Guide to Facebook, Connect Safely provides other excellent information about youth, social media, and how to stay safe using (not banning) the Internet in homes and schools.

Sylvia

via The Museum of Underwater Archaeology About the MUA.