Kids in school today are more comfortable working with computers than with pen-and-paper. And for kids with special needs it may actually be the only way for them to express themselves. So I always wondered what we can do to make the learning experience more accessible and powerful.

I was recently informed of an Mathematics add-in for Word 2013. This is so cool – not only does it facilitate the entry and display of mathematical symbols for you, it actually will solve some for you as well. And it also offers a graphing facility to generate plots of the curves which you have entered as equations. Very nice stuff, and it makes me want to reopen my textbook and re-learn all the stuff that I have forgotten by now

Want more?

If this got your interest, I’m pretty sure you will love the free and full-featured Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 package, specially created for education. That also has a teachers guide and documentation to go along. There’s even a Chemistry add-in for Word, which is now an open source project on CodePlex.

I’m really happy to see these products which Microsoft has made available to the education community. Do check them out and spread the word!