Get ready to be stunned! Wolfram Alpha will be brought online later today: May 15th, 2009.
Please watch this 13 minute introduction of Wolfram Alpha in action and you'll get a glimpse of a different way we will be using the web to learn and question. Could this be a research tool, YES? I can't wait to start using it. How would you cite it? One thought and concern I'm having about the information it returns is that it might be different over time if you are researching something that's not changing.
With tools like Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, Google, and other search engines available what are the essential tools you need to be able to learn from them? If these are in your toolkit are you ready to use them with these essential skills?
- Good spelling ability,(does that even matter anymore?)
- ability to come up with essential questions,
- a desire to learn,
- thirst for knowledge...
Some background - I remember back in the 1980's a very cool math program called Mathematica. It was available on the Apple Macintosh (maybe other platforms too) and it could do so many mind-blowing things graphically to represent data. I only played with it a small bit on a friend's computer, but I was impressed. The author of that program was none other than Stephen Wolfram.
I titled this post "web-olution" because I thought it captured the BIG STEP that Stephen Wolfram has taken with his project Wolfram Alpha. It's using the information on the web in a way that is quite evolutionary; thus, webolution! (I considered wevolution, but it sounds too much like Elmer Fudd - hehehehe).
Fantastic website! I look forward to using it frequently!
ReplyDeleteWOW - You have got to be kidding me. I found myself laughing in amazement about how much it can do and how it will change the face of internet searching.
ReplyDeleteJen Phillips :)
This is an amazing computational tool! I wish someone would design a "language" tool similar to this--giving origins of words, giving a listing of all the authors and what they have written, giving a synopsis of all the great works of literature--all in one handy search engine. Whew! It sounds impossible, but if this computation engine can give this much data, it seems that a language/literature search engine might be feasible someday, too. Rebecca Raleigh
ReplyDeleteFor another take on Wolfram Alpha (WA) here's a link to Kathy's blog post about her experiences - I like the part about citations and built-in credibility that WA uses.
ReplyDeletehttp://kathyschrock.net/blog/2009/05/wolfram-alpha-thoughts.html
WOW! Is there nothing left for the human mind to do?
ReplyDelete