Special Blog Assignment #1

I love WolframAlpha! I had no idea this even existed before being assigned this special blog. There are astounding amounts and types of information to be found. When I done the original comparison between populations of India, China, and America, I expected to find the populations and percentages. What I didn’t expect was the extent of information readily available. Not only is the population listed, but there are also population ratios, densities, growth rates, life expectancies, and even median ages. Better still, WolframAlpha offers visuals! As they say, seeing is believing. I couldn’t wait to get started on my other two required searches, and I’ve done multiple more since then.

Search #1

I may have had a bit too much fun with this assignment! Since I ended up doing so many different searches and the uses for WolframAlpha are almost endless, I had to choose which ones to write about in my blog. For my first one, I used WolframAlpha to help pay for dinner with friends. We forgot to ask the waitress to split the bill for us! I payed for everything on my card, but still needed to know how much my friends needed to reimburse me. I am not a math person, so this was extremely nifty! I did already know that WolframAlpha was capable of this from personal research. This is what I typed in as my search phrase: $93.27, 15% tip, 4 people. Directly below this paragraph is a screenshot of my search results. You can see that I found exactly what I wanted to know (amount per person, including tip), along with lots of other information as well.

Search #2

Jeanette doesn’t seem to be common name. I have never met anyone that shares my name. So, for my second search I entered: number of people named Jeanette. WolframAlpha provided me with the estimated number of people alive named Jeanette, the population fraction, expected rank (I assume to mean name popularity), and also the most common age of these people. It is so much fun to have such unlimited access to information. I took this a step further and added “vs Summer” to my search phrase. I’ve included another screenshot below. It gave me all the same information but compared the two side by side.

How Can We Use WolframAlpha?!

There are so many ways that WolframAlpha can be used. I done a good bit of snooping around this site. I found a WolframAlpha blog that has the specific category for education! How cool, right? You can visit that blog by clicking here. More specifically, I recommend that you consider reading this blog posted by Richard Clark. In this blog, Richard shares 10 more questions that kids can answer using WolframAlpha. I was especially fond of the way it could lay out mathematics. I wouldn’t really know where to start explaining the ways in which this can be beneficial to my students, or myself. I haven’t failed to find anything I’ve searched for yet. The possibilities are endless!

Technology And Educators

I have a lot of catching up and a lot of keeping up to do. The advancements in technology just since I was a child are mind blowing. EDM 310 has really opened my eyes! I think outside of “just doing my job”, I’ll have to continuously teach myself as well. I think this same principle needs to be instilled into our students. Be a life long learner. Research outside of the box. It has already been discussed that most jobs people will hold 10 years from now do not even yet exist. How do you prepare for something like that? I say feed your intelligence, explore, be creative. Learn to learn. I think as an educator it should be a priority to enhance adaptability. Of course students need to know all of the basic things you learn through school, but I do not think that it should be put far above creativity and innovation. It is with these, I believe, that students will excel most.