OK, it is not my intention here to start a flame war, but this is a subject that needs some rational discussion: the place of calculators in the classroom. This is a subject that is dear to my heart, because I spend 7-8 hours a day in a middle school math classroom that includes TI-78 calculators. There are 30 of them, and they hang in little pockets on a blanket attached to one wall, each one numbered (and every student in every class has his/her assigned calculator number).
I am the student teacher, which means I assist the real teacher and teach some classes each day. This is 6th grade, and one group of kids is learning how to add and subtract fractions while the other group is moving into data analysis and probability. Fractions are probably the most complex math topic that a 6th grader faces. Just a simple thing like adding two fractions requires a lot of skills that many 6th graders (in fact, many adults) do not normally have: determining the common denominator; converting mixed numbers to improper fractions and vice versa; creating equivalent fractions with the new denominator; adding the numerators; and simplifying the result (if necessary, and determining when it is necessary). Think about how overwhelming that process can be for a 6th grader who does not have the logical, analytical, and organizational skills that you and I have. So how do we teach it? By going over the basics again and again until most of the kids have it, and then moving on. Do we use calculators in this process? No, not for fraction addition, because we know how important it is for the kids to know how to do it without the calculator.
Let me tell you how we do use the calculator. On a recent test, we said that the national debt of the US is $7,030,125,000,000 and the median income is $14,900, so if each family earned the median income, how many families would it take to eradicate the national debt? So we let kids use the calculators to divide the 7 trillion by 14 thousand, because once a kid has mastered long division (and almost all of these kids have) there is no reason for them not to be able to use technology for problems like these. When they leave school they will enter a world full of technology and they had better be able to use it if they are to compete in the marketplace. And we let kids use computers in the classroom (when it is educative) for the same reason.
OK, I know that many of you guys (and gals) learned math without the benefits of technology. Heck, so did I. There were no calculators back when I was in middle school (then called junior high school) in 1961. And we all learned it OK (or at least most of us did). But if we don’t expose kids to the current technology, we are doing them a disservice.
Please understand what I’m saying. A kid has to demonstrate that they can add, subtract, multiply, and divide using pencil and paper before they can use the technology. But once they have that knowledge, let them use technology for the purpose for which it is intended. Face it, guys, no one calculates square roots manually anymore. I learned how to do it in the 60’s, but I couldn’t do it today. But I know where the square root key is on my calculator.
OK, let’s get a discussion going…..
Don Shepherd