TED.com

I was looking at some classmates blogs and I saw a post on TED.com on Chelsea's blog. TED.com is a site that has videos of lectures and presentations on technology, entertainment, science, business, global issues... It has a lot of great stuff from experts, and a lot of interesting stuff.

I watched a few presentations, one was on making complex information simple by presenting it in a form that is easy to understand by using computers and graphics that are simple. I saw a video on a touchscreen that can use multiple points at once, so you can manipulate things more easily. Then I watched a presentation on math education by Conrad Wolfram. It was about teaching kids math with computers. His emphasis was that we spend too much time on learning the calculating part of math instead of thinking up problems that are related to the real world, and how to apply the answer to the real world. He said that one big problem is that math problems in school are dumbed down, and students don't see the value in learning it and don't know how to apply it to the real world. Later he talked about how if you really want to see if a student knows the math have them do some programming to get a computer to do it. He emphasized making math more practical and more conceptual.
One point that I found really interesting and I agree with was that with the help of computers you can introduce students to math earlier than normal. His example was calculus, which is generally taught in high school. He made a computer program to introduce his daughter to a calculus concept. I found this point really good and interesting. It will be very beneficial to students if they are introduced to more advanced problems earlier. With the help of computers they are not limited by their calculating skills, so they can explore more complex problems.

Link to Teaching Kids Math With Computers