[theintern]

While I agree that it's ridiculous that this is the case, I side with the students who were given a choice and chose the physical calculator. The thought of doing Numerical Analysis problems and long calculations on an app sounds excruciating, and I know that Accounting classes would have taken an order of magnitude longer without tactile feedback.

The replacement for a $100 problem is to buy students iPads and use an app and touchscreen? That's not a viable solution whatsoever for the vast majority of schools. The real solution is for schools to simply advocate using a cheaper and similarly functioned calculator. I used a Casio EL531 all through school and college and while it didn't graph, it covered me for everything in an Engineering degree.

[anon4]

Maybe TI should upgrade the processor in it a bit? Put a better screen? Maybe one based on e-ink? Imagine a LISP machine with dedicated calculator buttons, the size of a small kindle.

An iPad with an app is not the solution, but how come graphing calculators haven't advanced at all.

[electroly]

Go to TI's website right now and look at their graphing calculators section. Seriously, this isn't a thought experiment. Go check it out:

https://education.ti.com/en/us/products#!product=graphing-ca...

They DO have vastly improved and modernized calculators. The Nspire line has fast processors, lots of storage, bright color screens, touch capability, greatly improved software, etc. They don't really even cost more than the "old school" TI graphing calculators. TI can really only be blamed for not dropping the price on their old models. It would be misleading to suggest that TI hasn't worked on more advanced calculators.

[greydius]

Aside from the color screen and faster processor, these new Nspire calculators have no new features except gimmicky stuff (No one is going to buy a calculator because they need a 2"x2" spreadsheet). Even my TI-89, which I bought in 1999, has the same basic functionality. (Maybe that's why the TI-89's price hasn't changed -- it costs as much as the Nspire CAS). The only truly useful improvement TI has made is a rechargeable battery pack.

[jcrawfordor]

The NSpire OS is significantly more usable than the 83+ and 89 that I went through school with. In one case, I was able to put a dataset acquired from measurements into the spreadsheet editor, run a linear regression, get the r^2 for the regression, then draw the graph of points and line and save it in just a few seconds of menu choices - without ever having done that on an NSpire before. This would have taken me significantly longer on the older models if I hadn't already memorized the procedure.

So I wouldn't say that the NSpire has any radically new features, but I think that it's a lot more approachable then the older models. It feels less like something that you have to specifically learn to use and more like an intuitive software package - which is perhaps what our author is really getting at when they talk about apps.

[dspillett]

> but how come graphing calculators haven't advanced at all.

They don't really need to so there is little commercial reason to develop better models. The old TI-81/TI-83 designs are still perfectly sufficient for the courses to a certainly level, and above that you need something much more than just a bit improved so you can run chunky software like matlab. There isn't really much of an exploitable niche in between.

[souljaswag]

I used pencil and parchment...

[dspillett]

> The replacement for a $100 problem is to buy students iPads and use an app and touchscreen?

When put exactly that way, yes that sounds silly.

But what about an app and a stack of much cheaper tablets? Not one per child but a pool for the school which are available to use in lesson time, exam time, and for the less well-off students to be borrowed for homework. Those that have their own Android tablet can just use their own and run the app on that, just needing a school one for exams (where they would not be allowed their own because they could bring notes into a closed-book exam).

For exam use they'd need to be locked down but that should be easy enough. Require that all students use a school provided one (so they can't hide notes and other such on their own devices) and re-image each before the exams start (so yes, some admin time to factor in here) with a base OS plus the desired app and all wireless locked off.

I mentioned Android above for cheapness mainly, if you are going to target one platform then for this use the one you can get the least expensive units for should win. Having said that, you don't need to go the native app route: build it in JS and you can run it on any device. For what the students will be needing even those cheap god-awful-slow tablets will cope quite nicely unless your JS and DOM manipulations are grossly inefficient. For the locked-down situation in an exam room "run" the app from local files and use the local storage options in the browser if you need to maintain state.

There would be an up-front cost (buying a job lot of tablets initially) and ongoing maintenance (a rolling program of replacing them as they break and some admin time updating/resetting them as needed) but you can get easily get 7" tablets for less than $50 each as single units and that price should drop when buying in bulk. For a smaller device something like https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor... might be more suitable (smaller screen but easier to pocket and has physical keyboard) when they are available.

And of course the schools don't have to provide them, if they already expect the students to have a TI calculator how is requiring them to have a cheap tablet or similar any different?

The key problems with this idea as I see it:

* Getting the new app-and-devices idea accepted as a viable alternative (the current graphing calculators are pretty entrenched).

* Writing the app in the first place, and then maintaining it. I doubt there would be a commercial impetus for anyone to do it so it would need to be some form of F/OSS arrangement or funded from education budgets. Maybe if I win the lottery and need a project to fill my spare time with I'll give it a go...

[rtkwe]

They are entrenched but there's also a lot of reasons that they've stuck around too beyond the inertia of the education system. Any alternative is fighting against a lot of we established training and knowledge. Teachers have been using them for years and the functions are well known and pretty easy to figure out.

TI graphing calculators just work in a way that will be really hard to match with more complex or newer devices like an Android Tablet running an app. The software has been ironed out over years of use and I can't remember ever causing a crash on my 83s or my 89. Plus there's no admin or reimaging required because anyone can go and reset the device to factory in a couple seconds before a test.

Don't discount their low power draw and instantly replaceable batteries either. TIs get weeks of use out of a pair of batteries and you know that they're getting low long before they run out so there's plenty of time to get replacement batteries. Compare that to any cheap Android tablet where 5 hours of active use kills it dead and it takes too much time to charge it back up before a test or class is over so you have to either a) replace it with a charged spare or b) get power to the kid's desk. That's a pretty big knock against having a pool of devices as an important component of testing or in class work.