Education Innovation

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

(RowDefault[, (Spacer1), , (Spacer1), ])  #WolframTechConf

Abstract

For the last 8 years the Wolfram Summer School has included an Educational Innovation track which includes:

Wolfram Language training

Lectures on Computational Thinking

Mentoring by educational technology experts

Accelerated development of educational tools, including Generative AI tools

Group work with like-minded educators

Project guidance from Stephen Wolfram

Goal and Focus

Goal is to quickly develop education tools using Wolfram technologies

Focus of projects is to change the way people learn and teach—for example, creating tools for students to use or management platforms for teachers

School Format

How is the School run?

In 2020 and 2021 the Wolfram Summer School was fully virtual

In 2022 it used a hybrid format, and was held in Champaign, IL

In 2023 the Wolfram Summer School returned to Bentley University (Waltham, MA)

School Outcomes

So what do you do at the School?

Student Output

Writing a computational essay

Creating a repository submission: Function Repository, Paclet Repository, Notebook Archive, Neural Net Repository, Data Repository.

Writing a microblog on your project published on Wolfram Community

Tumblr

A quick overview of outputs from all tracks is on Tumblr

Wolfram Community

All presentations—now as interactive Notebooks—are published on the Wolfram Community

Wolfram Technology Conference

Check out the conference sessions with the  Future of Education  label

Useful Resources

Developing courses from scratch is time-consuming

Avoid re-invention

Take advantage of the huge range of resources:

Embed demonstrations directly into your Notebooks:

["DielectricSphereInAUniformElectricField"]

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

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

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

Learning Resources

The Wolfram Language: Fast Introduction for Programmers

Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language

Wolfram Documentation Center

Wolfram Challenges

Wolfram Programming Lab

Wolfram Screencast and Video Gallery

Wolfram U

Previous Wolfram Summer School Lectures

Repositories

Wolfram Language Code Gallery

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Wolfram Data Repository

Wolfram Neural Net Repository

Wolfram Function Repository

Wolfram Language Paclet Repository

Wolfram Foundation Notebook Archive

Wolfram Community and News

Wolfram Community

Wolfram Community - Staff Picks

Wolfram Blog

More resources

Student Experience

Mads Bahrami (WSS 2017)

Mads is now the manager of Academic Innovation Support (AI, Quantum and more) at Wolfram Research:

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.

John McNally (WSS 2022)

John attended the 2022 Wolfram Summer School—and now works for Wolfram Research in Academic Innovation Support:

Why you enjoyed the School?

The School is a great place to meet like-minded people

Get a range of ideas for overcoming institutional inertia

Could not recommend it more!

After his experience at WSS, he wanted to spread the word!

Why you think others would too?

Students really want to use Problem/Project-Based Learning (PBL)—and the School genuinely is PBL

ZOOM is not perfect and in-person is better

Interdisciplinary collaboration is great for the classroom

What you got out of it?

Great advice about UI design

How much WL is required? Much more important to bring your own domain knowledge

For Discussion

I hope that I’ve convinced you to attend a future Wolfram Summer School!

There are, of course, many obstacles to true educational innovation:

Innovation is hard!

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?