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Calculator rant
(I was going to write a con report for concussion, but I'm still too sleepy from a bug Henry and I have been down with for the last couple of days)
This isn't the calculator rant that you might expect...
Sure, I'm all for mental arithmetic and I try and teach my pupils to use it before they reach for the calculator (they NEED to learn how to estimate to know if they have a sensible answer after pushing all those buttons); however, the real rant is that most kids don't actually know how to use their calculators.
I've just watched a lad type in a division. After getting the result from that, he cleared the screen and typed the number in again in order to work out the arc sin.
He hadn't realised that he could use the on-screen value as the input for his next calculation. (He was making this mistake in other calculations as well.)
In addition to the above, he didn't know if there was a memory function on his calculator and had no idea how to use one.
Just to make life even more fun, I couldn't find the memory function either! The wretched gadget had so many functions (most of which were totally irrelevent to GCSE level that it was difficult to find the things that were actually useful.
I think parents ought to be specificaly warned NOT to buy a fancy calculator. All the kids need at GCSE is trig functions, pi, standard form notation, x to the power of y, basic four functions, a memory (two if we're really generous) and brackets. And it might well aid their understanding of BODMAS if they had to manage without the brackets...
I've got one young boy with a fully graphic calculator. He hasn't a clue how to use any of the fancy stuff and doesn't need it in any case. But the fancy stuff gets in the way of being able to do basic math. There's too many buttons and too many functions per button.
I do most of my calculator work on a four function calcuator with big buttons, one memory and a square root. It does 95% of what I need. I only get out the scientific calculator (25 years old and still working) when I need to do trigonometry.
This isn't the calculator rant that you might expect...
Sure, I'm all for mental arithmetic and I try and teach my pupils to use it before they reach for the calculator (they NEED to learn how to estimate to know if they have a sensible answer after pushing all those buttons); however, the real rant is that most kids don't actually know how to use their calculators.
I've just watched a lad type in a division. After getting the result from that, he cleared the screen and typed the number in again in order to work out the arc sin.
He hadn't realised that he could use the on-screen value as the input for his next calculation. (He was making this mistake in other calculations as well.)
In addition to the above, he didn't know if there was a memory function on his calculator and had no idea how to use one.
Just to make life even more fun, I couldn't find the memory function either! The wretched gadget had so many functions (most of which were totally irrelevent to GCSE level that it was difficult to find the things that were actually useful.
I think parents ought to be specificaly warned NOT to buy a fancy calculator. All the kids need at GCSE is trig functions, pi, standard form notation, x to the power of y, basic four functions, a memory (two if we're really generous) and brackets. And it might well aid their understanding of BODMAS if they had to manage without the brackets...
I've got one young boy with a fully graphic calculator. He hasn't a clue how to use any of the fancy stuff and doesn't need it in any case. But the fancy stuff gets in the way of being able to do basic math. There's too many buttons and too many functions per button.
I do most of my calculator work on a four function calcuator with big buttons, one memory and a square root. It does 95% of what I need. I only get out the scientific calculator (25 years old and still working) when I need to do trigonometry.