Posts
I often hear complaints funneled via their high school teachers that students who used graphing calculators while in high school as a means of supporting their understanding of calculus concepts find, when they get to college, that they are not allowed to use them.
Apparently, these complaints are correct.
10 comments:
Typo. 2007 should read 2000 :-)
I see this as good news !
-Mark Roulo
that students who used graphing calculators while in high school as a means of supporting their understanding of calculus concepts
*snicker*
I suppose theoretically, graphing calculators could be useful for supporting one's understanding of calculus. I just have yet to see it actually happen.
From my son’s high school course catalog:
College Algebra, Grade 12
This course is designed to give students a thorough preparation for college level mathematics. Topics include elementary function theory, polynomials, exponents, logarithms, trigonometry, graphs of functions and matrices. Students will consistently use the graphing calculator in conjunction with the topics and there will be an emphasis on applications and models. A final exam will be given in June.
I wonder if this course will prepare students to take calculus in college?
In my college math courses (honors calc sequence - taken in 1999 and 2000, oddly enough), we actually preferred closed calc/comp exams to those that allowed them. It was common knowledge that if we were allowed to use calculators and the computer, the professor just made the exam that much harder to make up for it (the professor even said as much, usually with a very sadistic grin). The supposed "help" was actually nothing of the sort.
-forty-two
It was common knowledge that if we were allowed to use calculators and the computer, the professor just made the exam that much harder to make up for it
lol!
you can't win
Five or six years ago, when I was in the middle of my "our middle school math curriculum is terrible" temper tantrum, a college professor friend of mine commented that her students freaked out at having to simplify 700,000/7,000,000 on a test without benefit of a calculator.
Naturally, she and I both attributed this to their failure to having been properly taught how to do this as part of an elementary or middle school math program.
I later mentioned this anecdote to our then director of curriculum as evidence of the failure of a fuzzy math "understanding based" curriculum. Her response was to the effect that the problem was that the students must truly not have understanding; if only they had understanding, they would have been able to quickly reduce that to 1/10.
That was probably one of those defining moments for me when I realized just how steep the uphill climb would be in effecting change.
Her response was to the effect that the problem was that the students must truly not have understanding; if only they had understanding, they would have been able to quickly reduce that to 1/10.
Well, that *is* true, so far as it goes: students who had gone through an 'understanding-based' math course didn't actually have understanding. Obviously something is not working and thus needs fixing. The problem is that she seems to think that "the students didn't understand" somehow absolves the curriculum (and the school) of all blame.
It's like a baseball player at bat who, after a strike, still insists that his swing was absolutely perfect. The fact that he missed is irrelevant - his swing was perfect, and he defends this by insisting that it is the ball's responsibility, really, to be in the right spot to be hit.
Honestly, educrats see to have forgotten that the curriculum is merely a means to an end, and not an end in itself. No matter how elegant and well-designed a curriculum or method may be, if it fails to accomplish its stated goal, it is worthless.
-forty-two
No matter how elegant and well-designed a curriculum or method may be, if it fails to accomplish its stated goal, it is worthless.
Right.
It's the "inputs" model, which affects everyone's thinking, often including my own.
a college professor friend of mine commented that her students freaked out at having to simplify 700,000/7,000,000 on a test without benefit of a calculator
these stories really are horrifying
this is why I'll carry on overseeing C's math education
I think his high school teachers will be better, and the curriculum won't be insanely rushed
but schools simply do NOT assess well, PERIOD
they give grades; they don't assess
no school can tell a student or a parent where his gaps in knowledge are
with other subjects, that's OK (right? I assume that's OK in most sciences....since the real action comes in college)
with math it's not
Our CC's "College Algebra" classes spend (waste?) weeks on teaching the use of a graphing calculator. Most Uni's do the same. In that sense, that Grade 12 course description is pretty good. What is bad is that this should be no more than a Grade 11 class, along with trig, like it was 30 years ago.
Most of our calculus classes will separate topics into those where a calculator can be used and ones where it cannot. I don't allow those devices on my physics exams because they are used to cheat (store formulas and notes).
Besides, like the poster above noted, I write an exam based on how long it takes me to do it with the allowed tools. [They get a factor of 4.] If I require use of a sophisticated calculator, I will expect them to use everything it can do as efficiently as they can multiply numbers. Most don't even know what the fraction keys do.
Post a Comment