Should Students Denpend on Calculator?

Author: admin  /  Category: General

Often times I hear my students asking: “Can I employ a calculator?” My invariable answer is “No”, and now that I think about it, it is because the traditional teaching philosophy indicates that you do not need a calculator when you have to compute an integral. Also, as teachers, we use to think instantly that it’s all about “mental laziness”.

Well, I must admit that times have changed, and it seems it is now the right time to be in tune with the wonders that science and technology have to supply. The arrival of enormously tough PC Algebra Systems (CAS) is giving us more and more reasons to change out teaching styles to a new paradigm, where the ideas are presented along with real visual computer-generated representations, and where the emphasis is put on the ideas instead of the symbolic manipulation.

For example, in a standard first year college Calculus class, it takes a great amount of effort to go over a chain of systems that help the students to grasp integration. Those methodologies are obviously mechanical and repeated, but yet students have a tough time understanding the main ideas. Nowadays, software like Mathematica and others are capable to solve symbolically some awfully complex integrals, which go way beyond what a skilled first year calculus student can do.

Shouldn’t we make a stress on the concepts rather than on the calculations? In arithmetic, it is tough to separate because the two go tightly together. But I definitely believe that we might benefit by introducing systematically the use of CAS in the study room. There’s a trend in the majority of the schools to introduce PC assignments, as a part of the curricula, but from my experience, are not getting the majority of it. They continue to don’t see the computer as a friendly ally at the time of learning maths. But yet, they might gladly accept a calculator.

The future of CAS should also include a technique to use all this “intelligence” used to resolve difficult problems to also being able to “explain” a way to arrive to the answer.

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