Re: TI-89 virtue email needed


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Re: TI-89 virtue email needed



Okay, so maybe that was poorly worded, and maybe I was the first person
to say it so bluntly.  I don't know if you've been following the
discussion all along or not, but a quick summary will aid me in telling
why I said what I did.  Somebody complained that a teacher would not
allow the 89 in class.  He asked for support.  I asked if we really
wanted to encourage use of the calculator over actually learning the
skill.  I asked where we draw this line in cases like this.  Two people,
RWW Taylor and Tom Lake, gave very excellent responses.  These included
points such as: any losses as a society are outweighed by the gains of
being able to expand into even more complicated math;   we have lost
skills before and survived;  any skills that one day become nessecary
again will be rediscovered and taught again.  Now, obviously these are
generalizations, but in a general sense we must acknowledge that
technology has much improved our standard of life, and many old skills
have fallen by the wayside in favor of bigger and better things.  Also,
I did not wish to rehash the minutia of the argument lest the topic get
stale.  So I accepted the premise that the line, as it were, is
constantly moving forward as the technology improves.  I did this so I
could move on and point out that the schools should and will adapt to
the TI-89 in classrooms, but not for a while.
I personally am all for teaching the concepts of calculus etc. by hand.
However, I do not know know the systematic method of finding a square
root by hand.  So I am already the victim of expanding technolgy.  And
you know what?  I am not worse off for it.  If I had to, I could guess
and check to find a square root by hand, but I will never have to.  I
support you in your efforts to preserve the skill to do the math by
hand.  However, we must realise that this view will not entirely survive
in the long term.  There is nothing wrong with holding on to the past
and present, but we must keep an eye to the future as well.
The interesting thing is to watch the progression.  I imagine that
twenty years ago (or whatever) teacher got upset that calculators
automated square roots.  Now nobody cares, but they complain that
calculators automate integrals.  In twenty more years, no one will care
about that, but there will be something new that the calculators can do
that the teachers will be upset by.  The abacus was replaced by the
slide rule was replaced by the four function calculator was replaced by
the graphing scientific calculator was replaced by...
On the list have also appeared two responses to Tom Lake's message.
They expound on the virtues of retaining skills, and are quite good
themselves.  If I could be fully on both sides of this issue, I would
be.  As it is, I am trying to find the happy medium of the topic, while
also trying to anticipate what will actually occur in the real world and
the reasons for it.  It is a difficult debate, to be sure.

>I have to take objection to your statement that "skills lost to
machines are
>acceptable losses".   I teach electronics in a vocational setting.  The
students
>in my classroom/lab are required to calculate  the electrical
characteristics
>(current and power) of any circuit they are working with.  If a
calculator is
>unavailable (even though there exists a class set) they must be able to
do so
>with pencil and paper.  I require this to minimize the possibility of
an
>accident.
>
>Rick Homard
>
>Ray Kremer wrote:
>
>> Yet another excellent response.  I think we've established now that
skills
>> lost to machines are acceptable losses.  After all, as long as one
person
>> still knows how to find a square root, he can program the calcualtor
to do
>> it, and the rest of us can use the calculator.  As long as one person
knows
>> how to make soap, the rest of us can buy it from him.
>> [remained of message omitted]

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