Education Innovation

Paul Abbott
Academic Director, Wolfram Summer School 
abbott@wolfram.com

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Abstract

For the last 6 years, the Wolfram Summer School has included an Educational Innovation track.

This is great place to develop and implement educational innovation:

Mentoring from experts and Wolfram Research developers

Shared experience in making educational technologies

Stephen Wolfram is an active participant and provides general guidance to—and review of—all projects

Quality feedback from—and interaction with—other like-minded educators

Intensive hands-on 3 week format including in-depth training on Wolfram Language technology development

Lectures and discussions on computational thinking and current strategies

Assistance to quickly develop education tools using Wolfram technologies

Projects focus on changing the way people learn and teach—for example, creating tools for students to use, or management platforms for teachers

Example Outputs

Project outcomes from the Wolfram Summer School are distributed via various channels.

Tumblr

A quick overview of outputs from all tracks is on Tumblr.

And here is a list of all Education Innovation outputs.

Wolfram (Virtual) Technology Conference

Education Sessions

Click on the  FUTURE OF EDUCATION  banner.

Poster Sessions

Click on the  POSTER SESSION  banner.

Wolfram Community

Presentations as interactive Notebooks are published on the Wolfram Community—an excellent resource for Educational Innovation!

Here is a list of Education posts.

Useful Resources

Developing courses from scratch is time-consuming...

...so use tools from the extensive range of resources:

The Wolfram Education webpage gives an overview of the Wolfram technology stack in education

Demonstrations website ⊳ http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/

Computational Thinking Initiatives ⊳ https://www.computationinitiative.org/

Wolfram|Alpha ⊳ http://wolframalpha.com/

MathWorld ⊳ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

Wolfram U courses

Wolfram Function Repository

Wolfram books such as Quantum Mechanics, ElectroDynamics, ...

Education Partnerships

Feedback

Comments on the Wolfram Summer School from three attendees:

Carlos Arango

Why you enjoyed the School

The academic environment of the WSS: I could talk about my project with my advisor and classmates.

The great diversity of topics offered a great opportunity to know about other fields.

Why you think others would too

In spite of the tremendous amount of work, people were very excited about sharing their work in the final presentation.

What you got out of it

I learnt a lot about Mathematica, established contacts with other classmates, and got ideas for my own research.

Mads Bahrami

Why you enjoyed the School

Going to to dorm life-style, spending days and night on research and developing something new; like good old days, not too old though ;)

Meeting an international community of WL coders.

Why you think others would too

For improving their coding skills (my main motivation when I applied for WSS as a student).

What you got out of it

It opened a new door/horizon in my life; changing my view about what I want to do for my future.

Alison Ord

Why you enjoyed the School

I found it a particularly joyful and fulfilling experience. Friends and family noted that I was positively glowing on my return.

I fully committed myself to the School. This in itself tends to result in a fulfilling experience.

The requirements of the application process including the documentation and the interview certainly helped, and forced, me to think through what I wanted out of the School, and what Wolfram might have wanted out of my attendance at the school.

Why you think others would too

I was enchanted by Stephen Wolfram, who attended each day, and provided highly enjoyable, sometimes interactive, presentations, of varying format and content.

20 or so Wolfram experts gave presentations on their particular topic, following up with formal and informal discussions, yoga, and walks in the woods.

The entire process was smooth, productive, and obviously very well managed.

I have never seen the download of information from one group to another group result in such rapid and effective gain in understanding and knowledge in the second group in such a short time.

The final deliverables were creative and well-developed. I keep wanting more.

The people I met, of all ages, were creative and hard-working, and interested in so many different things.

I was most impressed at the many different applications people thought of for the Wolfram language.

What you got out of it

I was particularly interested in the teaching of computational thinking skills, and in the different ways Wolfram Notebooks can be used, all of which I saw in action at the School.

In hindsight, I was almost too focussed on learning the details of how to create an all-singing, all-dancing ebook, and on the details of developing fast software for interacting with disparate geological data using in particular tools developed for analysing nonlinear dynamic systems.

I continue to learn from the School, now WSS 2020 also. There are a number of ideas in their final deliverables, now being shown as posters at WTC, which I find of interest.

I listen carefully to Stephen, as I find much of what he says very wise.

I keep coming across interesting people associated with Wolfram, Oliver Rubenkonig for one, who I discover has a paper with Jan Korvink on Interactive Learning.

2021 and 2022 Summer Schools

This year we made several changes to the format of the EDU track:

Courses

Presented an overview of the Wolfram technology stack in education with examples of how it is being used in different educational settings

Removed some “compulsory” courses, less relevant to the EDU track

New Mentors

In 2021 I called upon several people to make the EDU track possible:

Clayton Shonkwiler

Phil Ramsden

Yves Papegay

Seth Chandler

Craig Carter

Ankit Naik

many of whom are at this conference—and I would like to thank them all again for mentoring students.

Venue and Format

As in 2020 the School was virtual

However, hopefully the School will return to Bentley University in 2022—at least in a hybrid mode—a mix of virtual and in-person attendees

Personally, I missed the closer engagement and connection that arises between students and mentors in the in-person mode of running the School...

Future Changes

Help educators navigate the digital education landscape discussing recent trends and focus on innovative projects

Add sessions on technological-pedagogical content knowledge and action—things that would actually be useful for educators in addition to just providing technology

Comments

To really be innovative in education there are many issues that need to be addressed:

Real innovation is not easy

Cost

Infrastructure

Within an educational institution, one needs support to implement innovation

Convincing others that your idea is a good one is not always easy

Arranging for immersive use of technology in lectures, lab classes and, particularly, exams can be difficult

How should one best implement Computational Thinking in education?

Conclusion

If you are interested in educational innovation, please apply to attend the Wolfram Summer School!

Feedback, comments, and suggestions—which you can provide via the Chat link on Pathable—or via email, are most welcome.