Funded Sep 10, 2013My students were very thankful for the TI-Nspire/TI-84 Plus calculators that we received. They were surprised when I told them about the generous people who shared their resources and donated the highly advanced calculators. My Calculus students were so happy to use the same template when inputting integrals on these calculators. Instead of entering the parameters as a comma-separated list on old calculators, the students were surprised to see the parts of the integral on the screen and to input the function and limits of integration. They were also glad to see that they can graph parametric functions and that you can program them to rapidly compute approximations and visually show these methods. With all these discoveries, the students were very eager to spend time getting used to this new technology.
At the end of every major unit in our Calculus class, students are grouped so that they can practice rigor when problem solving. Students are required to work with one another, create posters of their original solutions and present work in front of the class. The introduction of these calculators are surely helped them find the solutions in a faster way and present their ideas in a more effective way. These calculators are also used by some struggling students during remedial after-school activities to help them practice and strengthen the skills that they need to be successful in this class.
Since I started using the calculators, concepts are much easier to teach as calculus becomes more dynamic. Students become more confident and introspective as they can devote more time in constructing their knowledge rather than spending a lot of time calculating values as the new calculators are able to perform more complex operations faster than the old calculators that we had.
Again, thank you very much for your donation and we promise to take good care of these gifts.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Rebong