I will be starting a Calculus project in the next couple of weeks and I was thinking what it was like for me to take Calculus back in high school. Internet was just starting and it was not readily available in schools. I had a very old and clunky TI-82 Calculator. I think it may have been the first graphing calculator they made. I think of what the students have available to them now, and I marvel. I know some teachers think that students rely on technology too much, but I think we need to provide students with different options. Of course students should be able to take a derivative, but does it make sense at some point for students to struggle though large derivatives if we are testing another skill?
I looked through the internet to find some helpful sites for students and for teachers.
The first is a complete Calculus class on Hippocampus.org. There is also a Spanish version of the course which is wonderful. Math is supposed to be the universal language so it is wonderful that language is not a barrier in this case.
I also found a wonderful website with an extensive list of graphics that can be used by students and teachers.
Cow.math offers a list of small calculus modules. These modules can be used by students as extra practice or students can use them for remediation purposes.
I also looked for websites to help students with their TI-83 calculators. The website prenhall.com has an incredible table of contents for every TI-83 calculator that has been made.
For those students that are interested in the history behind Calculus, I found a great website that outlines how we came to be studying this subject.
As always, please share your finds with the rest of us and see you next week.
Teaching Math Blog
Laura Bost
Earning a M.Ed. from UCSD in 2005, Laura Bost has since taught math concepts from remedial algebra to calculus in high school classrooms, online classrooms, and private tutorials.
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3 comments:
If you're needing new calculators, make sure to buy the TI-NSpire, which has TI-84 emulation. It's well worth the few extra dollars. Skip the TI-NSpire CAS. It's better, but not accepted on some high-stakes tests sadly.
There were 2 calculators before the TI-82, the TI-80 & the TI-81. The 82 was a huge step up with lots more functions and memory. In those days, most of us liked the HP better than the TI. It was not until the TI-83 came out that we were converted. I still have my old HP and it's not as obsolete as the old TI's.
Thank you for the info. about Cow.math. I will be teaching The Calculus (instead of the applied class)this summer for the first time in two years and I can use that site! I agree that the publishers have come out with some good stuff. You should also check out WebAssign where you can have online HW that links directly to the text. They are still building the library, but the Larson calculus book is on there.
I have seen the new TI Caclculator and was wondering about it's capabilities. Can you tell me a little more about it?
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