Learning Matters

WolframAlpha, a search engine that launched several weeks ago, runs on the sophisticated computational software Mathematica, to compute answers to questions. Unlike google or other search engines, it accomplishes this by using built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledges; massive amounts of data about various physical laws and properties. As Jeffrey R. Young writes in The Chronicle today, “It makes a graphing calculator look like a slide rule.”

What will that mean for the study of mathematics? Will students be allowed to use WolframAlpha inside or outside of the classroom? Professors have shown mixed sentiments of both excitement and caution, and it’s making for an interesting discussion about learning in general.

Roger A. Freedman, a physics lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara summarized: “the greatest challenges that science and math students face are conceptual, not computational, and neither calculators nor WolframAlpha can do much about that.”

Read the Full Article:
Calculating Web Site Could Ignite New Campus ‘Math War’ [Chronicle, 6/12/09]
WolframAlpha

This year’s graduates face a tough job market, with unemployment on the rise across the country. So what’s a young, unemployed college graduate to do? If recent history is any indication they may just move to Portland, Oregon.

Portland’s unemployment rate has doubled in the last year and is hovering at 11.8% (the national average is 8.9%) — due in part to an influx of young, educated unemployed new residents.  The fraction of Oregon workers with college degrees increased to 28.3% in 2007 (above the national average of 27.5%) from 19.5% in 1990 (below the national average of 21.3%), and Portland’s mayor is hoping that the college grads will stick around while the economy straightens itself  out.

Certain lifestyle quirks, such as a vibrant music scene, seem to go far in attracting young people to the city despite the lack of jobs. Other fun facts? Other than Seattle, no city with a population over 1 million has more coffee shops per capita and roughly 8% of Portlanders commute regularly by bike, the highest proportion of any major U.S. city and about 10 times the national average.

Youth Magnet Cities Hit Midlife Crisis [Wall Street Journal, 5/16/09]

Touring Portland by Bike [New York Times, 4/3/09]

“The Story of Stuff,” written and narrated by former Greenpeace activist Annie Leonard, is a short film about human consumption and its implications for the health of the planet. The twenty minute video uses straight-forward language and a friendly animation style to visually depict the cause and effect of acquiring ’stuff.’

While the video has received some criticism for being too ‘political,’ or leaving the viewer with too few solutions, it has gained a huge audience — over six million viewers since it’s 2007 debut — which is still growing as the video continues to go ‘viral’ online.

Teachers in particular have been circulating ‘The Story of Stuff,’ using it as a classroom tool to spark discussion about the environment, and supplementing outdated earth science textbooks.  Teachers using web-based information in the classroom?  It’s surely a sign of things to come for the planet.

The Story of Stuff Website

A Cautionary Video About America’s ‘Stuff’ [NY Times, 5/10/09]

Update on Schoolboard Opposition to Film