On "Mathematica Natsu no Gakkou" (Mathematica Summer School)

Mathematica is well known among secondary school teachers in Japan. But not many of them have used Mathematica in the classroom or have developed teaching materials that use it. "Mathematica Natsu no Gakkou" is a project for providing the opportunity to develop Mathematica-related materials for teachers who do not have enough information on how to use Mathematica. The first Mathematica Natsu no Gakkou was held in summer 1996 with the cooperation of Wolfram Research Asia Limited, the Mathematica User's Group in Japan, and Mathematica dealers in Japan. So far, about 60 teachers have attended these workshops and various teaching materials have been developed. Anyone can download and use them freely. This, I think, is the first place where mathematics teachers from all parts of the country can communicate with one another. The objective of this workshop is to develop materials which can be used in a classroom setting, such as:

1. materials to present ideas to students
2. materials to be used by students for self-teaching
3. materials to introduce Mathematica as a programming language

Thorough examination as to whether or not all of the materials developed at workshops can be used in all kinds of schools will be necessary. In Japan, it seems to have become a requirement in the mathematics curriculum to not only utilize computers in mathematics, but to also teach programming in information science classes. In this presentation, I talk about how the Mathematica Natsu no Gakkou program is run, some of the materials made there, the problems we confronted, and plans for developing teaching materials in the future.