Current thinking is BYOT - Bring Your Own Tech - replacing calculators, smartboards, laptops, desk computers AND most textbooks with either a school-issued tablet or whatever fancier, more powerful version a student’s family choosed to provide.
…the problem being that all K-12 ed is devolving to standardized teaching to score well on standardized tests which determine which standardized college program you’ll enter to get your standardized job ticket.
The notion that education has other reasons and other purposes is somewhere between forgotten and a bad joke.
You still need to reason through a word problem to punch it into the calculator right, and most of the ACT questions (my daughter has taken the ACT so its what I’m more familiar with) want you to reason - not spend your time doing long division - so that they can cover the most conceptual ground in three hours.
I’ve seen this in my own children. I mean, back when they did any math at all.
And the lion’s share of the students taking Algebra 1 will never, ever, get there. And even if they do, isn’t higher math more about understanding the concepts and processes than it is about the bookkeeping? Getting the right answer just shows you know what you are doing. Hell, my sophomore Geometry class was mostly proofs. No need for a calculator of any sort there.
SBOOB? SEIBOOB? I think you’re a bit backward there.
Me, neither. Thirty-some years of being called, and paid like I was, an engineer and I never graphed shit.
Not for TI! (The TI-83 came out in 1996, like xkcd said.)
Despite my many, many TI calculators–some of which even work–I haven’t trusted them since I had to replace my TI-55II three times in the early '80s. My TI-55 (1977-ish, red LEDs) could use new batteries that are not old enough to be president. My current TI-55II recently got stuck in STAT mode. My TI-55III, which was the TI-55II without the crappy keypad, is MIA, as is my TI-86. My TI-82 (the TI-83 was a slight upgrade) looks like it needs another rebuild. And my TI-59 has begun to act stupid 30 years after somebody else first bought it.
For work use I gave up on TIs in 1984 and bought a Casio fx-82b that I still use regularly. But all is not happy in Casioland. I picked up some later models of the fx-82 series (they still make them) and they got progressively more annoying. And my CFX-9850GB color grapher just up and quit a couple months back, like it was a common TI.
But my point is that I went through HS Algebra 1 twice and CC Advanced Algebra once and I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why a student would need or use a graphing calculator in that class.
My question as well. And I think someone mentioned using a calculator for geometry.
It’s scary how dysfunctional kids are with the basics of math. I once bought a $19.42 item and paid for it with a $20. The poor lad was completely flummoxed by the transaction and kept trying to pay me the purchase price because of what the cash register told him. Not only could he not figure out the change was 58 cents but he couldn’t grasp the concept that I was only due loose change.
Even the TI-83 differed from the TI-84 in several respects. I distinctly remember several times that I had to find a different way through menus to get to the advanced functions that my teacher wanted me to use.
Also, TIs are made of good stuff which means that to save money I used the same calculator my brother used - that means it has been working for two decades now. I used the calculator frequently and often throughout high school and college. Absolutely a solid investment. I no longer need to do anything advanced with it but I find it handy to see several lines of calculations on the screen at once.
So I’m not sure what is useless about these calculators. Used ones can be had for a low price and your kid won’t be singled out in class.
If anything I would be questioning teaching every kid advanced math when I can tell you that as much as I liked trigonometry, I have used it exactly one time since high school. Also, I have been assigned some mandatory textbooks that I never cracked even once.
My high school taught up to calculus by the way, and while I can’t remember the name of the classes before that exactly, I know that matrices and logs were part of the required classes for graduation (we needed 3 years of math to graduate; the last year in calculus was optional).
If your children lose and/or break expensive electronics regularly, perhaps teach them to be more careful.
If you find that some people can’t figure out the change at the store, perhaps they are challenged in that area. My mother could figure out your change in a heartbeat and in a glance; she never did anything past algebra. I conceptually have trouble with change and always have, yet I could easily do calculus. Do not judge a person’s worth so quickly.
They do that as a service to you. How else would you know that your present calculator is utter crap and you had to buy a new one? The Silver Edition, of course. :rolleyes:
My trig teacher didn’t allow us to use those fancy, new Scientifical calculators in class or tests because “What would you do if your batteries died in the middle of the wilderness?” The question, “Why would you have sine and log tables in the wilderness?” went unanswered. It was really two things: Not everybody could afford a $100 calculator (especially in 1977), and he really liked tables.
Let me chime in. I have been a teacher, my wife is a teacher and my daughter is a teacher so you can expect that I will defend the teachers and in most cases you’d be right. But your child’s 8th grade teacher has zero say when it comes to curriculum choice, that decision is often made by the state dept of educ. or the local school board. And you as a voter are solely responsible for those folks. A good teacher will use the calculator to enhance the learning experience, a poor one will use it only when the assigned text calls for it.
My oldest grandson will enter 5th grade next week. He has been accepted into a special program that is totally paperless. He will be given an iPad on the first day and it will be used in all subject areas as well as for homework assignments. My daughter has the option of taking out a $40.00 insurance policy against loss, breakage, etc. (Almost all the parents of the kids in this program do.) if he is successful and stays in the program he will never use a textbook again. In his district this particular program moves kids from iPads to MacBook Airs in 8th grade.
I see this kind of program being expanded as districts come to,the realization that it is actually more cost efficient. When it comes to needing a calculator, there’s an app for that. Bad teachers are scared to death of these sort of programs. Lazy teachers don’t want “Smartboards” because they have to write new lesson plans and can’t repeat the same work year after year. School districts will learn that good teachers are hard to find and will demand better pay. But who knows, we may actually catch up to places like Viet Nam.
When I taught (it was at the college level) I required, for a number of reasons, that all papers be handed in on USB thumb drives. Education is changing, adapting and evolving – not nearly fast enough, but it is happening. It’s happening because it has to if he US is to remain competitive in the global marketplace.
To the OP, talk to the school about setting up some kind of exchange program so that those who do not want to buy the $100 calculator can buy one from a parent whose child is tracking towards the liberal arts.
The judgment would go both ways. Back in HS when I worked cashier, sometimes when the customer would pay in cash, the bill would come out to $9.27 or something to that effect and reach into his pocket and say “nope. don’t have it.” and hand me the $10 or $20 To which I would respond, “you can still give me those 2 pennies there” then hand back just quarters instead of whatever combination of coins yielding 73 cents was. Almost always got a look like I was doing witchcraft, and every so often someone was convinced I was trying to scam them.
Of course there is. It’s the remedial math track. It takes two years for Algebra I and two years for Geometry. There’s not enough time to get into algebra and all that stuff you’ll never use again unless you actually go further in math. And I say that as someone who loves math. Algebra II means imaginary numbers and that’s about it. And that just doesn’t come up.
You can’t use a graphing calculator on the ACT. You can use only a lower caliber one on some other tests. You definitely can’t use the TI-84, which is more advanced than the TI-89 and TI-92, both of which were banned.
And, anyways, you have less than a minute per problem. That means you don’t have time to use the calculator.
Correct. As with many ways to enrich a child’s education, it is in no way needed. However, multiple posters have explained how it can be a benefit if the teacher uses it correctly. Hopefully he or she will. If not, you have the perfect opportunity to step in and make a real, positive impact. For 55 cents a class. Hell of a lot cheaper than your kids’ music lessons, sports camps, family trips to historic sites and museums, and all the other enriching experiences parents strive to provide.
I can understand why a scientific calculator may be needed, but a graphing one? I got all the way through a PhD in a numerate subject without ever requiring a graphing calculator. When we needed to draw a graph, we, err, drew a graph on graph paper and actually developed a skill: being able to visualise what a function looked like by plotting various (x, y) co-ordinates. What compelling pedagogical need is there for a 13 year old to have a $100 graphing calculator?
We were told to get a scientific calculator (I think I had a £20 Casio, which was the most popular in my class, a few people had different ones). Occasionally there’d be some student who couldn’t find the required button (most are very similar, with all the major functions being named along similar lines). It took 10 seconds to sort the problem out. Hardly the major distraction some here are painting it as.
Further, Ruken, $100 may not sound like a lot, but it’s a fixed cost, no matter how wealthy a student’s family is.
This is incorrect. The TI-84 (and TI-83) are permitted on the ACT. (The TI-89 is not. I’m not sure why you say the TI-84 is more advanced than the TI-89; perhaps you’re mixing up your model numbers.)
Despite the name, there’s more than just the ability to draw a graph that sets graphing calculators apart from more modest scientific calculators. They have other abilities, including statistical functions, matrix calculations, tables of calculations, et al.
Now, I don’t know which, if any, of these capabilities would be used in middle or high school; but there are contexts in which they definitely come in handy.
It’s also true that there’s nothing a graphing calculator can do that can’t be done on a computer or tablet or smartrphone with the right (inexpensive, readily available) software. The advantages of graphing calculators are
(1) standardization/uniformity,
(2) convenience/portability, and (perhaps most important)
(3) because of the things they can’t do (like connect to the internet) that you don’t want students to be able to do in a classroom or testing situation, because of concerns of cheating or distraction.
