[baumandm]

I'm guessing they view releasing an official calculator app as a move towards eventually replacing the hardware calculator. It could help legitimize a cell phone calculator to schools and exam boards.

I'm also guessing their product margins are better on hardware than they would be on software, since there are so many other calculator apps available. The market of people who want a TI-branded calculator app on Android or iOS is a lot smaller than the captive student market.

IMHO eventually the tides will shift and school districts and exams will start allowing cell phones, and I imagine just before that happens they will suddenly discover they have a nice Android/iOS app ready to launch.

[dragonwriter]

> IMHO eventually the tides will shift and school districts and exams will start allowing cell phones

I doubt that will happen as an allowed accessory device, but what will happen, I expect, both school-issued and standardized exams will move from exams for which you can use an accessory calslculating device to online exams done on (possibly standardized, definitely closely monitored) computers which will have calculator utilities installed (possibly integrated into the exam), rendering dedicated educational calculators superfluous.

[JohnBooty]

    IMHO eventually the tides will shift and school
    districts and exams will start allowing cell phones,

Why would this happen, and why would it be a good thing?

[baumandm]

I think it's just the inevitable direction of a few trends. Technology is increasingly being adopted in schools, e.g. Chromebooks in classrooms, online and hybrid learning, submitting homework via the web, etc.

At the same time, kids are getting cell phones at earlier ages, and "cell" phones have already evolved into general purpose computing devices which are becoming essentially required for modern life.

Eventually, I think it's going to be hard to justify requiring students to purchase specialized calculator hardware when everyone already has a cell phone.

As to whether or not it's a good thing, who knows.. But the hypervigilance against student cheating only exists because of the outsized focus on exams. College Board clearly wants to prevent cheating on the SAT so they can retain their position as the gatekeeper of college admissions. But perhaps final exams and standardized tests aren't the best approach to evaluating students, in the same way that whiteboard interviews might not be the best way to conduct interviews.

[JohnBooty]

    whiteboard interviews might not be the best way to conduct interviews. 

Certainly agree with you there, but...

    But the hypervigilance against student cheating only exists because of the outsized focus on exams.

Agree with you about the outsized focus on exams, but deemphasizing exams (a good thing) is quite a different thing than allowing phones (and therefore net access) during an exam. We want our students to be proficient at searching for information online, but a maths exam shouldn't be the place to test that skill.

With net access, students for example could be fed the literal answers to a standardized test that was already taken by people in a different time zone. And what if there's a net outage during the exam?

Also, while the TI calculators are obviously underpowered and their stranglehold on the educational market borders on corruption, there is value in a standardized tool. What about students without phones and cellular data plans? What about students who can't afford apps, etc?

Last but not least, while the compute power of a TI calculator pales in comparison to, say, a phone or RaspberryPi at half the cost -- is the lack of compute power on tap really a problem? I got through calc I-III just fine with a TI back in the day. I would not say the TI was my limiting factor in any way.