Timeline for A study comparing effects of calculator usage on later math skills?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Dec 6, 2017 at 23:51 | comment | added | guest | I get the impression a lot of the proWolfram types are either (a) way out on the right side of the bell curve and don't understand or think about issues for the general population, which differs from them, or (b) learned a lot of things from calculations, algebra, diffyQs, so have it as background and then don't realize how much it helps them (while they move on to curve fitting and the like from computers). | |
| Dec 6, 2017 at 22:55 | answer | added | J. Plencner | timeline score: 10 | |
| Feb 3, 2015 at 20:05 | history | edited | Chris C |
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| Mar 31, 2014 at 19:15 | history | edited | quid |
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| Mar 29, 2014 at 10:44 | answer | added | Benjamin Dickman | timeline score: 15 | |
| Mar 29, 2014 at 3:52 | comment | added | ruler501 | A quick summary of the article Neil Strickland has in his comment. They tested 16 year old kids with an experimental lesson with cardioids. They found the kids were able to see what they were doing better and explore the concept more, but they had trouble integrating together all the information they had.The calculator offered them dynamic feedback which could be used to create new and more interesting lessons, and finally it did allow the students to see the affects of changing parts of the equation, giving them more flexibility with the concept. | |
| Mar 28, 2014 at 13:55 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | +1 ... asking for a study, and not merely opinions and anecdotes. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 10:10 | comment | added | user1729 | I find that if you are going to use calculators then you have to teach students how to use them: "remember, radians and not degrees!", "Brackets...", "$-1^2=-1\neq1$", and assorted rounding errors. I am still unsure if teaching the students how to get around these issues counts as teaching them maths or not... | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 8:23 | comment | added | Neil Strickland | Searching Google Scholar for "calculator education" gives many results. The top one points to this paper: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0732312396900279 ("The graphics calculator in mathematics education", Drijvers and Doorman). Unfortunately I don't have time to read it or to search for an ungated copy right now. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 6:46 | comment | added | ruler501 | That is an unfortunate example, but many tasks really are better left to a calculator. I personally think calculators should be fine to use, and the actual concepts of how to manipulate rationals, variables, etc should be taught. I'm not sure how practical this is to try to do though. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 6:37 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | My gut feeling is that good students are not hurt (at least not much) by having used calculators a lot, but mediocre students are hurt because e.g. their "sense" of how fractions work is left underdeveloped, and consequently they have severe problems manipulating rational functions and such. It did make me sad, when I was working with a relatively good student on a multivariable integration problem. In the end we reached the correct answer $\frac14+\frac16$, at which point she started rummaging her bag searching for her calculator. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 5:59 | comment | added | ruler501 | I think a lot of this will depend on how much they depend on calculator. Some students get more into math and will do better from calculators, but others will just make them do all their work. | |
| Mar 27, 2014 at 4:59 | history | asked | davidlowryduda | CC BY-SA 3.0 |