![]() ![]() The calculator also offers the ability to experiment with parameters in an equations to see how they affect properties like slope and intercepts. There’s a nice keypad with pretty print capabilities, so you don’t have to learn much in terms of calculator syntax, and there are a lot of sample equations to pull up while you get the hang of using the calculator. It’s simple to switch between cartesian and polar equations. I spent a few minutes working with the Desmos calculator this morning, and I’m very impressed. Startup Desmos has launched a graphing calculator that offers a lot of power and flexibility, as well as being simple to use. They’re either incapable of more sophisticated graphs, difficult to use, or just plain ugly. ![]() There are tons of graphing calculators online, but frankly, most of them aren’t worth much. ![]() Whether or not the standalone graphing calculator goes away, one hopes that the little homebrew scene it fostered-still going strong after two decades!-sticks around.There’s a new online graphing calculator out there that I think may soon top the National Library of Virtual Manipulative graphing calculator for top browser based grapher. (TI Education Technology President Peter Balyta, in comments to USA Today, tried to make the case, essentially, that the company’s calculators have “only the features that students need in the classroom, without the many distractions that come with smartphones, tablets and internet access.” Fair.) “It’s a huge source of inequity, and it’s just not the best way to learn.” “We think students shouldn’t have to buy this old, underpowered device anymore,” Desmos CEO Eli Luberoff told Quartz earlier this month. And it’s even gotten the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of the newer organizations offering standardized tests, to agree to use its online app instead of TI’s outdated, costly calculators.ĭesmos’ PR game is strong-in the past two weeks, the company has earned write-ups in Quartz, CNN Money, and USA Today-and while the app still has a ways to go before it topples the king (there are a lot of standardized tests out there) it's off to a good start. The online tool, which is paid for by schools through partnerships, has already proven a budding success. Recently, the Silicon Valley startup Desmos has been trying to take on the calculator industry through a smart mixture of modern technology and business strategy. Smartphones, clearly, beat the snot out of the TI calculators technically, but Texas Instruments, the company, apparently was very good at lobbying for the calculators’ continued existence in testing environments.īut things are changing … finally. As I noted a while back, I used my TI-82 mostly to play games. Instead, maybe 10 percent of its functionality gets used in most cases, and generally only in the context of math classes. But our education industry isn’t that forward-thinking. If the TI-84+ calculator that has become a fact of life for many students were used as a way to teach teens basic programming skills through a technical-but-ultimately-harmless interface, perhaps in the way that the Raspberry Pi has gained currency in the education world, it would be a great tool for education. Of all the artificial monopolies created by government and standards bodies, the one created for the graphing calculator by standardized testing bodies is perhaps the most disappointing. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |