Graphing calculators or iPod Touch?
Most schools require students to have a graphing calculator when they reach the dizzying heights of Senior mathematics. The students (or perhaps their parents) invest in these tools. The cheapest price I found was $116 for a Ti82. Which is alot of money for a tool with limited application beyond the mathematics and perhaps science domains.
Many of our students are equipped with MP3 players and the iPod Touch is a popular choice. A quick forage on the apple store turned up the following applications:
Belfry SciCalc – http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/belfryscicalc.html & http://scicalc.belfry.com/
here are its functions
- RPN and Algebraic modes
- Standard math functions plus percentages
- Reciprocals
- Squares, cubes, arbitrary powers, and roots
- Log bases e, 2, 10, and x
- Trigonometric and hyperbolic trigonometric functions
- Factorials
- Hexadecimal, decimal, octal, and binary bases
- Bitwise AND, OR, XOR, NOT, and arbitrary shifts and rotates
- Memory+, -, recall, swap, and clear
- Conspiracy – http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/conspiracy.html
- or for the adventurous – the Ti Emulator – http://lpg.ticalc.org/prj_tiemu/macosx.html
Is buying a Touch a better option than buying a graphing calculator? The touch can do so much more and I am not just talking about music.
I am not a maths teacher, so I don’t know if it will do everything it needs to. Could a maths teacher let me know?
May 10th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
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May 20th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Definitely an interesting question and one I have been asking since I got my ipod touch. I teach maths for the International Baccalaureate and all students are required to use a GDC, we use the TI – 84 series and are now experimenting with the TI – Nspire. As yet I have not found a single app that can reproduce all of the features and even in combination its not yet a match but I am really excited by the possibility that I think it is only a matter of time! Why not? I can see that exam governing bodies will be the biggest obstacle though; imagine the problems regulating the use of an iphone or ipod touch in an exam!
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