There was nothing this calculator did that you could not do for free on the web or through Wolfram Alpha. My teenager, with surprising patience, explained to me that (a) they weren’t allowed to be on the Internet during class and (b) even if they could be, they couldn’t be on it during exams and they needed a calculator they were familar with there. And when you are thinking about SATs or ACTs, that isn’t changing any time soon.
The reaction of schools to the Internet is to try to ban its use during school, particularly during tests. I do not think that these sorts of policies will hold up for very long.
Imagine that the printing press had just been invented. Schools would be telling students that they are not allowed to bring books to school, because books foster cheating. The proper reaction of students would then be to stay home and read, so that they can learn something.
I agree that incorporating new information technology would improve education, but I think are too quick (too optimistic?) when concluding that these policies will not hold up.
Think of books and exams — by and large, we still ban them, and it has been quite a while now since the printing press. Why should it be different with the internet? The surprise is that we allow even calculators (sometimes); this is the strange artifact that needs explanation. Moreover, if we understand this, it may point to how we can “un-ban” other technology.
I had lots of maths exams (for example all my exams at undergraduate) where I wasn’t allowed a calculator of any sort, let alone a graphical calculator or an internet connection. That was in the last decade. The peculiarity of no technological tools in school is much broader than just not allowing internet.
.At the very least, the technology used in practice should be available for learning as well, with the exception of really fundamental stuff like arithmetic. There is nothing more ridiculous than solving statistical modeling problems, or any applied linear algebra, by hand, a practice that is strangling the actuarial profession. An added benefit is that the more tools/information available the more degrees of freedom the exam problems, and thus the class, can take on. There is the possibility of the cognitive rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer however.
Cheating is a real problem with electronics. It’s a legitimate concern, but there are better ways to deal with it.
It took years for law professors to come around to allowing students to avoid handwriting in a blue book and type up their final exams using Exam4 and other computer-handicapping software that disables everything but a word processor and turns a laptop in a glorified typewriter. And even then, the students have to pay a hefty software license to use it!
Probably there’s a good market for an equivalent that turns a student’s laptop or smartphone into a glorified TI-84 during an exam to prevent cheating. If I recall correctly, there are already free or open-source TI-style emulators out there.
The real mystery is why these graphing calculators remain so expensive. Any technology that was introduced 22 years ago (as the TI-85 was) and was perfectly adequate for every high school and college math classes, should have a marginal cost of approximately nothing these days. But a TI-84 costs $100!
There is the point that the teachers ‘teach to the TI-84’, that is, they use the overhead projector version of it in class and teach the kids how to pass their tests by mastering the key sequences on this one particular piece of technology, which is something the kids can expect to remain the case all through high school. Any kid daring to go without, or use any other piece of technology, would be at a disadvantage unless they were cleverer than the average bear. That probably helps sustain the gigantic premium the companies are able to charge for these things.
Of course, when the teacher puts “TI-84” on the “mandatory school supplies list”, the ordinary parent-teen combo is just going to grudgingly accept the inflated prices they have to pay.
Similar points could be made about textbook prices. Non-cutting-edge mathematics doesn’t change that much, and the textbooks in almost any undergrad subject from 20 years ago are perfectly adequate today. Nevertheless, there are new Calculus textbooks released every year and with sticker prices sometimes over $100.
>> The reaction of schools to the Internet is to try to ban its use during school, particularly during tests. I do not think that these sorts of policies will hold up for very long.
>>Imagine that the printing press had just been invented. Schools would be telling students that they are not allowed to bring books to school, because books foster cheating. The proper reaction of students would then be to stay home and read, so that they can learn something.
ME:
Are all tests open book? Are even many tests open book?
Then why would we expect tests to be open Internet?
Yeah, I’m kind of surprised this is even a point of contention. We don’t allow open books, why would we allow open internet? Cheating is already an enormous problem among recent Asian immigrant populations (http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/asian-immigrants-and-what-no-one-mentions-aloud/) and overseas, as I mentioned in another post, it’s simply rampant. Bringing the internet into tests would only make everything much, much worse.
As for calculators, I’ve often wondered why the TI84 hasn’t dropped in price, and I suspect it’s because it’s at a reasonable pricepoint for the main purchasers—parents of middle class kids. Once we got to the TI84, it was pretty much game over. I tell my kids not to get the 89; I teach kids who are unlikely to go onto higher math.
I teach in a Title I school; when I proctor the PSAT, I bring a huge box of scientific calculators because most of our school’s kids will show up without one. It’s a pretty big equity issue, particularly on the SAT Math IIc, when you can buy a list of routines that allow you to plug in numbers on particularly type of questions and get an 800 without understanding the math. (Which is one reason why the Math IIc has something like 30% of kids getting an 800).
As for why we don’t teach with calculators–that depends on the class, but again, I teach kids who are unlikely to go on to higher math. I am teaching them math to help them learn how to understand something difficult. If all I teach them to do is “plug in numbers” then I’m wasting their time and mine. In cases where the kids are going to move on, of course a calculator is a useful tool. For my kids, it’s a bar to understanding. (And of course, again, many can’t afford graphing calculators).