As I was sitting on the couch, sipping my morning coffee and reading about the first battle of Ypres, Girlie Bear approached me with some news. It seems that her Algebra II teacher, while he waits to get his class going because there’s a delay in the school handing out the tablet computers that are mandatory for the class, has decided to be industrious and teach the class to use the graphing calculator that is also mandated. Girlie Bear was proud of herself that she was able to do the work on paper with out the $100 calculator, mainly because both her Algebra I teacher and her parents have pounded in “rise over run” when it comes to graphing linear equations.
But I know that if the teacher is requiring a graphing calculator, such paper and pencil work will only get her so far before she’ll lag behind. I looked at the budget and was grudgingly pressing the “Check Out” button on Amazon when it occurred to me that I had already purchased a tablet for her to use in this class. Tablets are computers. Computers come with applications, and this specific computer has its very own app store for downloading things like, oh, I don’t know, graphing calculators.
I whipped out my own tablet, went to Google Play, and lo and behold, there were about a dozen graphing calculator apps to be had, most of them free and none of them costing $100. At that point, I wiped away the tear of blood that was running down my cheek as I tried to wrap my mind around a class that required ownership of a tablet computer so that the school could save money on textbooks, yet did not utilize the free or low-cost apps that such a doo-dad makes easy.
A polite, professional email has been sent to her math teacher, enquiring about this perceived inconsistency. I’m hoping that a lightbulb will go off over someone’s head, and I won’t be on the hook for yet another calculator (Like Lowe’s, I seriously should have bought stock in Texas Instruments years ago). I’m hopeful, but I’m also keeping that TI-84 Plus in my shopping cart at Amazon.
Isn’t technology wonderful?
DaddyBear’s Den 
Old NFO
/ September 7, 2014Ah yes, apps… Sigh…
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bluesun
/ September 7, 2014I got through Engineering School without a graphing calculator… or a “tablet.” Casio fx-115ES for the win!
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Drang
/ September 8, 2014That’s just… dumb.
I cannot imagine anything a graphing calculator can do that a graphing calculator app on a tablet can.
Of course, we never even used sliderules when I took Algebra 1, 2, or “per-calculus”, AKA trigonometry. Slipsticks were reserved for Physics.
Calculators existed at the time, but they were incapable of anything beyond simple arithmetic, so they weren’t allowed in any classes.
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Geodkyt
/ September 8, 2014Likely it’s a failure of paradigm shift. Educators pretty much look at tablets as a combination of “electro-book” and “internet time waster bringing streaming porn into our schools through our lousy firewalls”, and are really only interested in the first.
They completely miss the whole, “Hey! This damned thing is a computer more powerful than the Mac Book I used in grad school ten years ago!” reasoning. . .
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daddybear71
/ September 8, 2014You’re probably right, although if they only wanted them to be used for textbooks, Kindles are a lot cheaper.
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