My Random Keys

I'm back at the ISTE conference this year and have high expectations, again. There are a ton of new technologies that will soon play a role in classrooms across the country and I'll get to look at a bunch of them.  There are some great speakers that will be presenting again and I'm hoping to get some good stuff from them, again.  Come one everyone, sing along:  I've got hiiigh hopes. I've got hiiiigh hopes...

My short list this year includes:

1) No matter how much you know about Web 2.0, Discovery's Hall Davidson and Steve Dembo always have something new that can positively affect the way you use tech in the classroom.

2) I have learned to like my iPad and am hopeful that I will be presenting a great iPad program at a conference next year.  However, I still think it's overrated and I want to sit in on some iPad sessions to gather more hype. Know the negatives to work the kinks into positives.

3) How are High Schools improving general ed use of tech in the classroom? Out of four workshops I did this summer, only 1 high school teacher showed. What is the magic dust needed to make even small changes with that level?

4) I've learned more about hardware this year than I ever wanted to know. Yet, is the new Epson projector/white board holding it's steam? What are the new iPad wannabees looking like?

5) For a couple of principals, I have to find microscope advancements and manipulative tools.

It's going to be a busy week, but the boots are shined and ready to make tracks.

For starters, I'm one of those who believes that Google is a great search engine for students all the way down to elementary school levels. Why pay large bucks for a private engine that eliminates tons of valid sites because there are many more tons of garbage that exists online? Young kids learn which channels on TV they can/should watch at home. They need to be taught, from a young age, how to validate and use information gleaned from Google searches.

So I rarely look deep into other search engines.  However, I've been reading about the growth of Wolfram Alpha for a while now and am starting to give it a look. It's called a Computational Knowledge Engine. Search 'Rosa Parks' and you will just get minimal vital statistics. Search the word 'apple' and you will get substantial corporate data on Apple Computer including many charts, graphs, and historical stock data.

As a computational engine, it has a huge collection of formulas and algorithms it can use.  Type your birthday and you will find out how many days old you are along with other historically important relationships with that date.  I realized that I'm almost 17,000 days old. I typed my birthday "+17000" and found that I turn 17,000 days old next September!   Wow, starting to feel old now.

I searched "Austin, Texas" and found some nice data. But with ISTE coming up soon, I searched "austin, texas to denver colorado" and learned that it was 767 miles away, and some statistical comparative data. That seemed wrong to me, remembering that Texas was almost 900 miles wide. So I spent some time with Google Maps and found:

	Wolfram Alpha	Google Maps
Austin - Denver	767.3 miles	931 miles
Orange, Tx - El Paso, Tx	760.3 miles	858 miles

Just about 3 minutes into this, I had a great Science/Math inquiry-based problem at hand. "Explain the difference in data received from the two search engines."

I think I'm buying into the new value for Wolfram in the educational setting. I would love to see what high school classrooms could do with this engine! If you see this being used (anywhere), I'd love to hear about it.

Learn more about Wolfram Alpha: Their About Page  Wikipedia's Article  and for grins, a Google Search!