Widgets for Education

Conrad Wolfram has an interesting website for creating widgets to make calculations for just about anything. The site is called Wolfram | Alpha Widgets and I find it fascinating.

Conrad Wolfram has an interesting philosophy about teaching math. Wolfram believes that teaching math is not the same as just teaching how to calculate and crunch numbers as it was once in the past. Rather, Wolfram believes we should teach less about calculation and more about asking the right questions.  Once we ask the right question we can then formulate it into an actual mathematical problem. He has created a site that facilitates doing just that – Alpha Widgets.

We use math all the time from calculating mortgages to finding the right ratios for expanding a favorite food recipe. Why not get students to better formulate everyday problems into something that can be calculated?  Wolfram helps you do this too in the Widget Builder section of the site.

The Widget Builder is especially useful as a tool to help students formulate mathematical calculations. It facilitates students to create a widget to calculate just about anything. And least we "re-invent" the wheel, there is a Widget Gallery for widgets that have already been created. Once we build a widget we can embed it into a web page and use it. For instance, here is a BMI calculator.




I find this site insightful for many who are searching for tools (widgets) that will help engage students in not just doing mathematical calculations, but also for those who want to get students to create tools to solve problems.