Calculators

Hi folks, how are you?
As you all know, calculator effects on individual people range from positive through neutral to negative and could either increase or decrease the validity of a person as a measure of mathematical reasoning skills.
However, there are different views about it. My schoolteacher, for instance, said we may never afford to use it till the fourth year, when sines and cosines suddently spring up in trigonometry; but she assured us we needn't to use it for the whole third year.
On the other way round, a different maths teacher I know is said to be unconcerned about this kind of things, perhaps he's more focused on other skills, such as what you really need to be conscious of or even what you are really requested to be acquainted with.
So my question is referred to all people, teachers or not, and would be: should we allow students to use calculators during lessons, tests... or whatever you want, or you think that the prohibition is made only in order to maintain our brain trained and ... Would it have effects?

I'm fine thank you! I Hope you are fine too!
Maybe the answer lies in the middle...

A calculator is just a tool for calculations, so if the exam is about calculations then the calculator will not be admitted. On the other hand if the exam is not about calculations then the calculator will not even be usefull! So there must exist some exams with the only purpose of doing calculations with calculators but wich real goal is in reality something deeper, should the esit of that exam determined only by calculations?

Sorry I'm not very bavard.

Well, I find that the calculator really helps people who - like me - have a really hard time when trying to do some mental calculus. I mean, seriously...I cannot even do 100 - 15 on the top of my head! However, I reckon that in some cases allowing the use of calculators helps "too much" (e.g.if you give an exercise which requires thestudent to calculate the square root of a number by hand or to plot a graph) and the risk is that students do not learn the lesson!

On the other way round, a different maths teacher I know is said to be unconcerned about this kind of things, perhaps he's more focused on other skills, such as what you really need to be conscious of or even what you are really requested to be acquainted with.
So my question is referred to all people, teachers or not, and would be: should we allow students to use calculators during lessons, tests... or whatever you want, or you think that the prohibition is made only in order to maintain our brain trained and ... Would it have effects?




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Ultima modifica di waleedi il 22/01/2015, 13:29, modificato 2 volte in totale.

Testo nascosto, perché contrassegnato dall'autore come fuori tema. Fai click in quest'area per vederlo.

How did you learn "needn't"? I mean, it's correct but I've read somewhere it's not so common to hear nowadays...