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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Found Calculators?
New submitter Covalent writes "I'm a science teacher and have, over the years, accumulated a number of lost graphing calculators (mostly TI-83s). After trying to locate the owners, I have given up and have been loaning them out to students as needed. I want to something more nerd-worthy with them, though. I would feel wrong for selling them. What is the best use for bunch of old calculators?"
You're loaning them to the needy. Doing good can be nerdy too.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Send one to Paul Ryan - he could do with help with his math
I think that loaning them out to needy students is the best possible use for them. Don't change a thing!
Give them to students who cannot otherwise afford them.
continue to lend them out and don't stress if one disappears (or rather: never returns). if you ever figure out who didn't return one, clue in their teacher they're an secret math student?
Beowulf Cluster
I also have a number of graphing calculators. That number being 1. How many is 'a number'! If its a complex or irrational number, your post would be more interesting. Otherwise, apart from some kind of modern art installation, the calculator lending library you already have seems like a good answer.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!
There are plenty of kids out there whose parents won't justify spending $100 on anything educational, so just keep those calculators on hand in your classroom and loan them out to students who need them. In doing so, you're giving underprivileged kids the same resources that more well-off children always have at their disposal, and hopefully by having the same tools as their peers, you can keep them engaged, interested, and learning.
That's nerd-worthy to me.
CALCnet allows networking of TI-83 and similar calculators with relatively simple external hardware.
With that detail out of the way, you are free to implement a display-wall and/or the most powerful z80 cluster computer in the known universe.
Extra credit, of course, will be awarded if you succeed in writing an xorg driver that can treat an MxN array of networked calculators as a greyscale display of appropriate resolution.
Loaning is probably OK, but before you donate or otherwise give up possession, check the rules.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't know about your school, but in every one of my middle school and high school math classes, students always needed more loaner calculators than they had. (my college banned calculators from math classes, which didn't really hurt since all I took was Calc II).
If you find that students are consistently being responsible and bringing their own, I suggest donating them to another school, so they can get some use from them.
There's not really anything interesting you can do with them - they aren't powerful enough to do anything other than do simple math, or perhaps play a mediocre Wolfenstein clone on (yes, it's real - google "ti-83 doom app"). The displays are shit, the processor is pathetic, and the input mechanism is severely lacking.
"What is the best use for bunch of old calculators?"
Ummmm..... Math?
On a more serious note, I'll go with Revotron's suggestion of keeping some on hand to give to kids whose parents can't or won't purchase one for them. If you still end up with extras, there are plenty of places which take old electronic devices and donate them to needy families and/or recycle them. Even a non-working device may be useful as spare parts for such places.
http://hackaday.com/2010/12/16/peer-network-using-graphing-calculators/
A TI-83 costs $80-$110. Surely you have students in your current classes who can't afford that. If you were to lend one to one of those students, and tell them to keep it at the end of the year, you'd potentially have a very constructive role in that child's life.
Yup.. It's about the same as if I had asked "I get old computer stuff abandon with me. What should I do with it?" . I give it to people who want or need it.
In other industries, there is a standard 90 day storage.. After that, they can do with it as if it is their own. If it's legally titled stuff (like a car), you have to request a court ordered transfer of ownership. Something like a calculator? If the owner didn't come get it, it's yours.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Beowulf Clusters?
Not because it's effective, but because you can!
If you have more calculators than you need for your own lending program, and the other math teachers (if any) at your school are also adequately equipped, then share them with other schools in your area. There's probably a classroom not too far down the road - perhaps across the tracks? - where they don't have a large number of kids carelessly abandoning valuable electronics.
~Idarubicin
Donate them to local Charities or over seas charities.
The Lend them out program you're doing works well also.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I'd say give them to students that look like they have need for them and no way to get one, though the idea of just using them in-class is pretty good. Maybe make a prize out of it?
Of course there is a Siicon Heaven. Where would all the calculators go?
You're doing the right thing by offering the calcs out to students who don't have one.
Doing good > Being a nerd
Key in 5,318,008, turn the calculator upside down, then smile with fifth grade satisfaction.
You don't want to get fired for trying to do the right thing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They're junk... give them away if you can find someone who wants them.
If he starts giving them to random people they could end up on eBay.
OTOH it seems to me like he already found some people who need them...
No sig today...
I dunno, how about checking what the latest nerd hipster chic is at BoingBoing and modifying the calculator accordingly?
Let's see ...
Cover in leather
Paint to look like R2D2
Haunted Mansion theme.
Yeah, no shortage of nerd things to do to old crap.
I'd avoid using tapeworms. But steam punk might still be acceptable in some circles.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I'd suggest finding a charity that would provide them to schools in Africa.
If they're solar, donate them to some third world schools.
What's the difference between Red Dwarf and Futurama?
Futurama has a Robot Hell.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Because you tore the phone number label off.
We need to know
The most "nerd-worthy" use would be taking them to the local shooting range as plinking targets.
Loaning these to students is doing them a disservice -- get some HPs if you want to do that. (Oh wait, you can't get lost HPs for free, because they're worth keeping track of.)
Anyway, I think TI-83s have Z80 CPUs, so you could always tear them apart and build a sick CP/M machine -- a sibling and I built a YASBEC when we were kids, but there's plenty of schematics for various computers you can choose from. Or, write your own BIOS and load CP/M on the calculator (the signing keys are available now), and spend the rest of your life cursing your tiny screen and keyboard.
I'd shoot 'em.
Link them together and use them to mine bitcoins. You might need to pay a few students to type in the numbers, but you will be richly rewarded.
To teach in a district that has no needy kids and can all afford $100 for a graphing calculator. What's wrong with what you were doing and lending them out to kids who need them?
Donate them to some third world country / school? Combine it with a project to collect more calculators, I for example, have several collecting dust that I would gladly donate in such a case.
Where else would all the old calculators go?
meh
To loan to his students. That's what mine does. And, who wants to spend $100 on a calculator they're only going to need in one class?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Please keep doing what you're doing. I had my graphing calculator stolen in high school, and was not happy about having to shell out the cash for a new one. I had a test later that day that required one, so I went to the head of the department and she reached into a box marked "graduated" and pulled one out. She put every found calculator that came her way into a box labelled with that year. Four years later she moved it into the graduated box, understanding that the student had since left and would not be claiming their lost property. She simply handed me one and said not to worry about it. A decade later I still use it.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Give away?
Sell them. You're getting paid about 1/4 of what you're worth. Sell 'em.
You could give them to needy students, each who can't afford one but still has a new Nintendo DS, of you could pocket some cash and take your significant-other out to dinner. If you ever get a night off from grading papers or writing lesson plans.
:wq
When you have enough, take them down to the calculator store and trade them for a good one that does RPN.
Have gnu, will travel.
Put some games on them. Or periodic table software. I love TI-83s, mostly because you can put your own software on it. Had some sort of a skating game on mine at one point. Also Tetris, Falldown, Snake, those pyramid puzzles for some reason...
A beowulf cluster of these could surely run that japanese AI that's so good at passing math tests. Once your school's test scores rise, the federal government will give you more money. Profit.
All you socialists could do with some help with your math too. You're always insisting that 2+2=4 and 1+1=2. But we conservative free thinkers know that 2+2 is really equal to 17. Don't listen to the lib'rul media!
or give them away to students who need them.
It turns on instantly, does what it's supposed to do correctly the same way each time, and turns off instantly. I have a TI-83 on my desk at all times. The user interface can't be beat either.
Mostly random stuff.
Nuke them from orbit - the only way to be sure
Considering the Lunar Module on the Apollo missions had a computer with the equivalent power of a TI-83...the sky is literally the limit.
Put on Bubble Bobble 83 for some 2P link game action.
As a matter of objective fact, the nerdiest thing you can do with a TI-83 is to write assembly programs for it on your PC, send them to the calculator through the proprietary* cable (if you've got one) and run them. If you don't have time to do it then maybe you have a student who has time. Challenge your students to write a simple program that draws something on the screen!
*It goes without saying that it would be nerdier if you built your own cable and used that.
My friend used to draw some mad calculator porn using the draw program. Since you work with kids maybe porn isnt the best idea. Maybe a LOST sign across four calculators that you could hang. Or you could do math formulas and hang it in the classroom. You'd need external power sources. I'd second the comment to ask on boing boing or apartment therapy since slashdot users seem to not be very artistic based on the comments so far.
5318008
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
A story I've kept for years as inspiration. A hundred points to anyone who can find the source:
One of the best parts of high school was when my math teacher took a spare TI-83 and let me use it exclusively for the whole semester, under specific terms: Do something awesome with it, and he'd let me skip my final.
Three weeks later, I'd written a small text adventure. A few weeks after that, I had a trading game with a complex market. By the end of the year, I had turned that same trading game into a graphical one, where the goal was to sail around the world buying low and selling high. The more money you had, the more likely you were to be attacked, which also took place in stunning 1-bit color graphics. The game's actions were controlled through a menu system, which was also used to launch the game (as opposed to the various tools I'd written to do my homework for me).
He was impressed, and I was inspired. When I started applying to colleges, I finally knew what major I wanted: computer science.
Keep loaning out those calculators. A student might need one, and not even realize it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I still use my TI-85 from my senior year of high school back in 1994-95. It still runs fantastically and is incredibly handy when I need to punch up numbers on something and don't want to fire up my computer. I've probably only changed the batteries in it about five times over the life of the device too. It just keeps going. When I look at the graphing calculators they put up for the back to school sales these days they don't look any more advanced than my trusty TI-85. Just a different plastic molding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation#Hewlett-Packard
Would argue that the interface on a TI83 can in fact be easily beaten ;)
Being Junk is debatable. What matters is they retail for $100 and up, and scores of high school math courses require them. My Algebra II class (in 1998) might as well have been retitled to "How to use your TI-83 calculator" Class tutorials often worked buttonpress by buttonpress. I lost 3 of them over the course of my high school career (two were stolen from my bookbag), and this was certainly no fun for my parents.
Yes, I realize the older models sell for cheap on ebay. I purchased my 3rd this way and still have it (I suspect it was stolen too), but when you've got an assignment due tomorrow, and even if you get an extension from the teacher, you risk falling behind, so you often bite your lip and pay Best Buy prices.
I wish they weren't so expensive. They shouldn't be. With the exception of some tiny crappy memory expansions, they haven't changed in like 20 years, yet the price tag has only gone up. I'd love to see some project like OLPC destroy this monopoly.
Actually, I am surprised at the lack of tablet/smartphone graphing applications that replicate and enhance the functionality provided by the dedicated graphing calculators.
Loaning them out when needed seems a perfectly suitable solution to the problem. Maybe get them to write some games - that was popular back in the day.
Or to draw the batman logo as an algorithm.
Yes it can. See: HP 48GX/SX.
Make your own cloud
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Goat.cx doesn't actually lead to anything shocking at all.
Try goatse.ru instead.
I think that our Chancellor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_the_Exchequer could do with a few !!
The TI-83 and especially the 84 are powerful easy to use and learn devices for programming.
In highschool my algebra teacher actually went into loops, and the math text book had blurbs how to program and i taught myself BASIC that way. Youve got an 8x16 character lcd screen, OR something around 94x180 pixels you could directly address. ie collision detection in a 2d game.
Hey developers, what if you had a pocket sized device you had to carry anyway that you could program on with 0 hurdles. I've passed my calculator down to my brother who used some of my programs as they were and learned from the rest to make his own.
If this inspires you, get an 84 not an 83, its got a better screen, and isnt slow, its got twice the speed and storage. Both are bottlenecks on the 83.
It's interesting and disconcerting people can't figure anything out on their own and feel the need to ask for help online or Google answers. If the OP doesn't know what to do with found calculators yet the OP works in a school where students would benefit from these calculators, I think we're in trouble. Next time I'm sleepy or hungry and don't know what to do about it I'm going to post a /. article and ask everyone.
Create a clip of the song "I'm the operator with my pocket calculator".
http://xkcd.com/768/
Eventually, some of those calculators may stop working, Why not expand your pedagogical uses beyond the math/science classroom? Hand the old broken models off to a club like FIRST and let your students get some experience taking apart electronics- even among prospective engineering students, surprisingly few people ever get to do that as kids. Or hand some live calculators off and let your students learn programming.
Helping students to avoid paying for wildly overpriced electronics is a noble goal, but remember that these devices have more classroom uses than just arithmetic.
With calculators, appearance is everything. Even small nicks and scratches will knock down the price to a tiny fraction, and because these were both forgotten by careless students and loaned out to others, it's fairly certain that they're not in great or even very good condition, and will lack manuals and boxes.
So they'll be worth very little.
Note: Certain models are rare, and can be worth more. If you have a HP-10C or TI-78 in the collection, you can get good offers, even if not in perfect condition. If you find a TI-88, we're talking thousands.
Why on Earth would anyone want to miss out on the shear joy of manually working through a maths problem by using a calculator?
Bazinga.
You can try getting various zilog z80 based software to run on it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-83_series
Oh, and keeping them as "loaners" for students who loose theirs or otherwise can't afford one would be awesome too. Times are tough.
It's interesting and disconcerting people can't figure anything out on their own and feel the need to ask for help online or Google answers. If the OP doesn't know what to do with found calculators yet the OP works in a school where students would benefit from these calculators, I think we're in trouble. Next time I'm sleepy or hungry and don't know what to do about it I'm going to post a /. article and ask everyone.
Perhaps its a matter of "whats the best course of action." He knows how to sell them. He knows how to give them away. He knows how to throw them out. He is looking for an out of the box solution, or third party moral justification for any of these actions.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
A modern high-school math calculator that is solar-powered and can run rings around the previous generations costs around $15 in any fall back-to-school sale, and even less when they're clearing out their school supplies for the Halloween stuff. Both my high-school kids have several old ones (borrowed from teachers when their was forgotten, or lost and then refound after purchasing a replacement) knocking around in their drawers. I've offered them to their friends and friend's parents, but every one just offers me back their old stuff.
Perfectly functional but unwanted electronics crap is everywhere these days: cell phones, DVD players, digital cameras, laptops, and high-school calculators will survive with the rats and cockroaches after we are long gone.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
When I was in high school ages ago I used hacked calculators as programmable measuring instruments. If you crack them open and solder a pair of wires across the '=' key, you can attach those leads to momentary switches on your test subject. For one of them I used a reed switch mounted on a bicycle fork, attached a magnet to a spoke, and then typed in the circumference of the wheel as an addition: 0 + (circumference). When the wheel turns it just 'clicks' the equals key for every revolution thus becoming an accurate odometer. (The '=' key on most calculators repeat the last operation)
Yes, 48SX was the best, and 48GX is the best.
And yet, I sold my 48SX to buy some perfume for my girlfriend.
It paid off, she's my wife for the past nearly 20 years!
blog.sam.liddicott.com
The user interface can't be beat either.
It can be, and has been.
Get an HP.
Mathematics, of course!
thank you, ill be here all weekend, tip your waitresses. try the fish.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I loaned one out to my cousin and never saw it again. I remember writing games for that thing too... checkers, reversi, hex, nym, etc. fun little basic programming environment with pixel-level graphics. (not too speedy though) So atm I just use my old TI-35 for basic stuff.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The fact that schools require their students to purchase these things never ceases to amaze me. Seriously? A highschool requiring $100+ purchases by students for a single class? A university sure, but a highschool should be providing the students with any materials that are required.
Maybe it's because I grew up in a somewhat small university town with high income inequality (so the school district had enough money but a lot of poor students,) but for the few classes where we were actually required to have a graphing calculator (in a lot of the lower level classes they were banned) we were given one by the school for the year. No different than our textbooks or anything else -- they give you one at the beginning of the year and write down the serial number in case it gets lost/stolen (they apparently found, and retrieved, one from a pawn shop once from those serial numbers.)
Hell, even for the lower level classes they usually had a couple TI-34s laying around for students who didn't have one -- though those were usually loaned out for the class period rather than an entire year.
Agreed. Bought it back in 1994 still my go to calculator today.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Wow, you were totally upsold on that perfume deal.
It sounded to me like he was less interested in providing them to his students as a "calculator" and more interested in using them for either personal or classroom geeky type things. Things like integrating them into a robotics device.
That said, I personally feel that the best use they could have would be in the hands of a child whose parents cannot afford to purchase a calculator.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Every student in my wife's 2nd grade class qualifies for the free and reduced lunch program, which puts them all at or below the poverty level. And they all seem to have Nintendo DS's.
All I'm saying is, teachers need to stop using their personal resources in the classroom. As long as they're willing to give things to the students, the school system will continue to encourage them to do so. Let the parents figure out how to provide calculators for their children. That's not the teacher's responsibility.
Your posts are insightful. You don't need to be an asshole.
:wq
What dollar store sells TI-83s? They typically sell for around $100...
In an era of smart-phones (and soon virtual reality glasses, brain implants, etc), specialized calculators are a window onto the past. Think like an archaeologist. Treat them as flint arrowheads of a long-gone civilization... Try to collect as much data as you can!
Photograph them with a microscope. Jump around the electromagnetic spectrum. Search for fingerprints. (This should ideally be done as soon as you acquire a lost calculator, and you should always avoid contaminating it with your own biological residue.) A myriad of tiny details can be observed: scratches, chemical analysis of attached dirt, wearing out of button resistance, etc, etc, etc. Create a 3D model of the object, overlaying all of this metadata. Perhaps an autopsy would reveal interesting metadata to overlay over its electronic schematic. Perform all sorts of fun mathematical analysis about what you can ascertain about the "life" ("physical" and "mental") of each calculator, and what statistical projections can be made about their life in the wild. Which model gets sneezed on the most? Do oils from corn chips use exponents more often? What deductive theories would a 21st century Sherlock Holmes form from those patterns? Go nuts - within reason. And, needless to say - publish everything online.
Then, if someone shows up to claim a lost calculator, dominance of fingerprints and/or DNA matching their body on the object in question would constitute reasonable circumstantial evidence. (For greater assurance, a waiting period may be prudent, in case there are any conflicting claims (ex. that the calculator was borrowed), but that might not be worth the inconvenience.)
The human civilization is moving forward at an ever-accelerating rate. We will soon see the passing of the last generation of homos preiphonus. Future generations will know the daily Twitterbabble of today's 13-year-old girls, but they won't know much about the lives of her pre-digital parents. Unless we collect as much data as we can, many valuable insights into who we and our parents were may disappear down the memory hole forever!
--libman
Reading comprehension fail.
the *batteries* come from a dollar store.
Sell the calculators as they are losing value being obsolete. Put the cash you make into a long term investment account. If they owners never claim, you make money. If they come back for them they will be ever thankful - and you could sell the story, too.
I need to apologies for the second have of that post. Much to my surprise the ti-85 still goes for 20 bucks used.
Shocking, really. I get more accurate results with a better interface on my phone.
As a former needy person, I still think you are an ass for your assumption about needy people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The good news is a used 48SX won't cost you much these days! The 48GX, on the other hand...
I would suggest singing 'Pocket Calculator' by Kraftwerk. For those unfamiliar with the song, one of the key lines is "I'm the operator with my pocket calculator" along with catchy lyrics such as "I am adding ... and subtracting".
Oh, and obigatory xkcd.
For those few /.ers unaware:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp48s.htm
"Nobody poor should ever get to enjoy themselves."
Look, I understand prioroty spending and budgeting, but you have to look at the costs and the humanitarian factor here.
A DS will cost what, $150? Maybe it's a birthday present. I know that a fair number of the families at my kids' school don't get breakfast every day, and at Gift Day time, it gets worse. Why? The families can afford food and clothing to get by, but then when you add in $X for presents, it doesn't work out so well. That's where hampers can come in. They don't have to splurge on the food for the feast, it takes the pressure off the food bill for a couple of weeks, and suddenly they've got a couple hundred for presents.
Maybe the kid's got a paper route and works their butt off to pay their phone bill / buy DS games. I had a paper route when I was a kid.
Now, let's look at the cost of lunches. It's going to run, let's say, $2.50 for a lunch for the kids. If the parents are below the poverty level (which you would if you're making min. wage) that lets you take that $2.50 a day and spend it on other things. Clothes. Bling. That's about 3 months worth of subsidized lunches for a DS. (I know, you're all like "THATS MY TAX MONEY I DONT USE GOVT MONEY AT ALL" when you're drinking EPA-approved water, driving on DOT roads approved by a PE, in a car regulated by the NHTSA, and all while you're protected by the police, fire department, and military. But other than that, no tax dollars, right?)
And bling is fucking important when you're in high school.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Donate them to some poor schools in a third world country.
Bow before me, for I am root.
That's what curbside garbage is for.....
Curiously, about 80% of the time, if I set an old computer or monitor (even old big CRTs) out on top of the trash cans...someone usually gets them long before the trash men come early the next morning...I call it "New Orleans Recycling".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Keep the best of them for lending as needed.
The teachers I know all have a list of things they need in their classroom that they are trying to acquire. So sell the rest and use the proceeds for those classroom needs that you would otherwise have to buy yourself, fight for, or do without.
TI holds a monopoly thanks to their sole approval with Educational Testing Service for use on the ACT and SAT exams.
Any calculator would be fine, TI and ETS would have you believe that anything else would be a cheating device.
That's why they go to such ridiculous lengths to make them difficult to hack (encrypted loaders, secret keys, etc).
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I still thing the 15C was the best calculator ever made -- with the added numerical excellence from the god of FP math William Kahan.
Ian Ameline
c/thing/think/ -- damn typos!
Ian Ameline
Maybe make a prize out of it?
Make a prize fight out of it. Sure to be much more entertaining.
Ah I don't want to start a holy war about that... I meant more along the lines of the actual buttons, how they're laid out and what they feel like, etc. As for old HP calculators, don't some of them have a bizarre tendency to drain batteries quickly because of some short in the keyboard membrane? I might be wrong but a guy at work brought in his old HP that killed its batteries in a few days.
Mostly random stuff.
I just bought an TI nSpire in a thrift shop in USA on my vacation, with the accompanying software and all. ...when I came home to start using it, the software told me that the registration no# had already been used, and isn't valid for use anymore. So no Updating my TI :(
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Hand them out to "Trick-or-treater"s...
And bling is fucking important when you're in high school.
It is? Only if you're a superficial moron or want to fit in with superficial morons. Hopefully it's the latter and not the former.
durn kids with their fancy graphing calculators showing plotted functions on a screen! In my day we used our Slide Rules to record cartesian pairs and plotted the points on graph paper (which we drew our own X and Y axis and put in the divisions, yup #2 pencil, not a fancy mechanical nosirree!)
Yup takes the fun out of computing a function by hand, and seeing where it ends up on your paper graph...
I miss my slide rule
It wouldn't be as wrong to sell them if you used the money to buy a bunch of Raspberry Pi units instead. You'd get a better, more educational product, and the per unit cost is actually less than for those antiquated calculators.
Sounds like you are being taught by a bunch of old fossils who have no idea how things are done these days. So you are wasting your time doing menial math tasks that could and should be automated by a calculator or Matlab, which of course slows the rate that you can learn the important stuff.
Here we use Matlab everywhere, the associate department head posted some great videos on how to do inverse Laplace transforms using your TI-89 to greatly accelerate the process, and so on.
The smart thing is to have the school sell them at a discounted rate (but they need to be qualified like if they are in the reduced/free lunch program) and have the profits go to the school fund. I agree that giving it away to kids by stating they only qualify because they are needy isn't enough. There is no easy criteria to put it into the needy versus the greedy. There are plenty of people out there who have no real sense of money. It could be a family that could be living paycheck to paycheck but have $150,000 a year income; or it could be a poor family on welfare somehow has an ipad, iphone and nintendo ds. We don't need to baby people, we need them to be smarter with their money. If a calculator screws up their future by not having them give them away calculator, then so be it. Babying the kids just shows that it is ok to be spending their money without investing in the future. While my solution isn't perfect, it's better than raising another generation to be unwise with their money.
Have you tried polling your classes for ideas on nerd-worthy endeavours for the calculators? You might be surprised by what they come up with.
That's OK - nobody knows what a "fuck twad" is anyway. If one can't express themselves without insulting someone else and/or resorting to profanity for lack of any appropriate alternative, then it is likely that one hasn't much to contribute after all. Have a great day!
$150? That'd be a 3DS. A new DS is $100 from Best Buy. $70 if you get a refurbished one. Go down to GameStop, and you can get a used one for even less. Hit a pawn shop or ebay, and you can go even lower. I'd be willing to bet that Goodwill and similar places have some for sale fairly cheaply as well.
And don't forget, even the poor have relatives. Mom & Dad may be too proud to take money from their parents or siblings, but you can bet the kids won't mind getting a shiny new electronic toy for a birthday or Christmas from their aunt, uncle, or grandparent. And going back to the used bit above, a lot of younger kids get consoles and such as hand-me-downs from an older brother or sister in high school or college... who may have bought it with their own money, from their own job.
My family wasn't poverty-level poor when I was a kid, but we were poor... and quite a few of the nicer toys that I got came from my oldest brother, who went into the Navy right out of high school, and was flush with cash for a few years, until he decided to move off-base.
My high school classes "required" such calculators, but had full class sets for use during class, and tried to make sure most work with them could be done during school hours. Whether or not the students actually got the work done in class, or refused to stop by for 5 minutes outside of class determined if they actually needed to own one.
Q;" What is the best use for bunch of old calculators?"
A;"use 'em to solve old equations."
ti83boobi.es is free. Post one a day.
I personally love the calculator input method (mostly)!
In fact, I use SAGE and OCTAVE (sometimes MATLAB) fairly regularly and would love to figure out how to either interface a TI-89-esq calculator to act as an input device or remap the keys (and I assume create macros?) to function similarly. I know some things are easier to type out (depending on what exactly you're doing), but being a relative novice (and so using basic functions and lots of actual numbers all the time) it'd be nice to have a number pad that was near a collection of buttons where each one was, e.g., cosine, sin, log, e^(, common variables, etc. Typing out "cos" or "exp()" etc. every time is really labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Anyway, I looked for such a way of doing things and haven't found any; I also know nothing about setting up a custom keyboard with macros and having it interface with SAGE (though I do know how to switch to the dvorak keyboard and can change my hot-keys :-P )
So my idea, then, is to use them to build interface devices for mathematical computer programs!!! (then send me on; my name is Anonymous Coward)
Spoken like a true naive right-wing American who wants desperately to believe that poverty is the result of some moral failing on the part of the poor, and therefore can never touch them or their loved ones.
Sorry, but the world doesn't work that way.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
When I was in school people made their own games and things with them. Now, create your own cloud computing platform which uses its CPU for calculations.. With enough of them you might be able to equal the power of a modern cell phone or wristwatch ;-)
Every student in my wife's 2nd grade class qualifies for the free and reduced lunch program, which puts them all at or below the poverty level. And they all seem to have Nintendo DS's.
So all we really need is a graphic calculator cartridge for the DS.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
All kidding aside, like (mostly) everyone else, I recommend either holding on to them to use as loaners in the classroom, or give them away. Try to remember if you were in a situation (temporarily or even long term) where you didn't have a calculator for whatever reason in class (especially as a kid). Wouldn't this have made you feel better?
http://hackaday.com/tag/ti-83/
http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/index.html
http://www.ticalc.org/hardware/cables/serial.html
http://education.ti.com/guidebooks/sdk/83p/sdk83pguide.pdf
http://sami.ticalc.org/irlink/e_hard.htm
http://smallrobot.bizland.com/Instructions.pdf
http://www.mathinscience.info/public/mathbots_challenge/mathbot_chall_lesson.htm
http://www.razorrobotics.com/knowledge/?title=TI_Connect
http://www.free-scientific-calculator.com/texas-instruments-graph-link-connectivity-kit/
http://blog.makezine.com/2006/02/19/how-to-connect-a-ti83-to/
Holy shit, massive reading comprehension fail. I now hang my head in shame.
How is giving it away to every Joe and Sally going to accomplish anything? I had to get a TI-82 for my classes in high school back in the day, but I was told by my father if I got one; then I need to give up getting any video game for my birthday. I got my TI-82 and gave up a SNES game (cost about the same). So you're telling me I should have expected a teacher and demand them to give me a $70-80 calculator so I can get a video game as a birthday present? World works more twisted than what most people are proposing. Last time I checked, TI calculators make it faster to do the graphing but aren't necessary. And the majority of kids would opt for a video game over the calculator. If the kid was good at math a TI calculator wouldn't make a huge difference. My suggested solution is to sell them at a low reduced price for those who qualify and take the profits into school budget. So what is your solution? Give it away randomly to the poor and only have an extreme minority will benefit (because a TI calculator isn't going to make them pro at mathematics).
I could have never afforded a TI graphing calculator in high school, and it was required for Calculus, so the school gave them out akin to a text book. You had your serial number recorded and if you lost it, you didn't graduate until you paid for it. The things I was able to learn and do punching on that thing day in and out were infinitely valuable. I was even able to sign out a second one so that I didn't have to purge the programs I made for class. If there is such an excess, giving them to people who really can use them is a great idea
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
imagine a beowulf cluster of calculators! fwiw I still use my ti-92, 15 years later.
for Math calculations of course!
Calculators, so 20th century, like typewriters, wrist watches, polaroid cameras and POTS telephones.
Seriously, what would you need a calculator for? Your cheapo phone has enough arithmetic capability for high school needs. If you need to learn graphing, you plot it by hand.
My 48G still sits within arm's reach. And I'm a lawyer now, so I mostly just use it for simple arithmetic these days. Totally unbeatable. (Though every time I look at it, I curse Carly Fiorina.)
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Take all the the little LCD displays and make a giant LCD B&W TV with them.
Do you have tiny child-like hands and a soldering gun?
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
So all we really need is a graphic calculator cartridge for the DS.
Done, over half a decade ago. http://blog.davr.org/2006/10/15/ds85-release-2/
You do need a flash cart, though. But those are cheap these days.
sudo eat my shorts
That's sort of what I was thinking. The best use is to let people who need to use one and do not have one use it. Texas Instruments pretty much shut down most of the modding communities over the calcs but even if they do exist, I'm not sure you could do anything more useful or cool then helping someone finish their education.
I think that really is the question being asked even if it isn't known it was being asked. Is there a use for the calcs more cool or useful then helping students get through or finish parts of their education. There is no right or wrong answer to that I guess, but I would have to think long and hard about any alternatives before I signed off my opinion in support of an alternative.
middle C is 440 hz, and with a bunch of them you can write all the parts to a sheet of music.
A friend of mine in highschool wrote 6 or 8 parts of Cortez and played them on our HP48sx's
now that's nerd points.
Doesn't anyone else remember playing games on the graphing calculators?
Hold one up to your ear to talk to yourself in public without scrutiny. Unless you would rather pretend to be using bluetooth.
Be a hero to a college student and raffle them off to college students at the beginning of semester and donate the cash to AAAS or something. My $0.03.
Where's my sock? There it is...
Give away?
Sell them. You're getting paid about 1/4 of what you're worth. Sell 'em.
You could give them to needy students, each who can't afford one but still has a new Nintendo DS, of you could pocket some cash and take your significant-other out to dinner. If you ever get a night off from grading papers or writing lesson plans.
Whatever floats your boat...
I gave away a ton of my stuff last week... not because it had no resale value, but just because it's just petty and beneath me to grub around after chump change for it.
I never sell anything... I give it away, or throw it away. I think people who actually take the time to sell their used crap are kind of pathetic, really. Just give it to someone who needs it and get on with your life.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Best idea so far. The TI-83 is a good enough graphing calculator for most. I can't imagine the sticker shock parents in low income homes get when their kid says we need a $100+ calculator. Also how many kids are avoiding higher level math because their household can't afford a calculator? Also the used market for graphing calculators dries up at the beginning of the school year.
I was on a field trip school field trip(winter) and one immigrant kid was crying he was so cold. I loaned him my oversized gloves and hat that day and gave the principal some high-tech gloves and hat to give to the kid the next day. There is no way that kid is getting a graphing calculator out of his parents.
I ask my kids if any of their classmates need a computer as I often end up with an older computer every few months. Again critical for homework but unaffordable in many homes.
We slashdotters probably look at things like the raspberry pi as a toy for some cool robot project but personally I suspect that one of the biggest impacts they will have will be a small number of industrious kids who make them their home computer and then are able to get ahead educationally.
So to the OP, you have a pile of life changing resources there; so go change some lives.
I think your comment about Nintendo's is shallow and missplaced. You have a situation with those who are trying to make ends meet, working multiple jobs, and both spouses working, Nintendo might be the only babysitter they can afford.
Also teachers who are invested in making sure your kids have the best education they can have so they have the chance a the american dream and invest their own money in that effort (for your kids, not them) from their meger salaries are the real Americans that are fundementally supporting the American dream. It would be better long range thinking to fund our kids education over say, supplying high tech airplanes and drones to go off and rain terror on some other country.
We have our priorities wrong on a Federal level.
Those teachers should be applauded for that activity not told to let the kids and their parent figure it out for themselves. That would get us more into those families that can afford the calculators and those that can't. Isn't it better to have an even playing field for at least the time the kids are in school?
People will decide whether to be your friend or not based on the first impression you give. We're all superficial morons.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Sell them cheaply (or give them away, but then you dont make any money) to students that cant afford them. Those things are pretty expensive, particularly for low income students, even if you sell them for 20 dollars or so (still a full profit, since you didnt buy them), its still much more affordable than buying full price. The only way I was ever able to get one (Im a sophmore in high school right now) was being lucky enough to find a Ti84 someone left in math. Or have the kids interested in electronics and such come in after school or something and let them see what they can come up with (may lead to broken calculators from failed attempts at who knows what). Same could be done with broken ones probably.
Better interface I'll buy, but more accurate? Are you saying the TI-85 and similar model calculators don't give correct answers?
Agree, check the rules first. You don't want to get fired for doing the wrong thing. My understanding of lost property is that for values above a certain dollar amount, you need to return it or make reasonable assurances of being able to return it. (For items of low/no dollar value, I understand it is considered de minimis - but the TI-83 sells new for about $100, which I don't consider de minimis.) You said you "would feel wrong for selling them" so you seem to know there's an issue of proper ownership here.
I understand wanting to do something nerd-worthy with this old gear. And I'd bet that no one will come looking for them again anyway. But the right thing to do here is to hand them over to authorities. Start with your school administration, probably your campus police (if you have one) or whatever department seems connected with legal issues. Let them tell you what to do next.
Maybe you'll be lucky and they'll come back with "we don't consider this to be valuable property, do what you want". In that case, you can do nerd-worthy things with them, or donate them, or sell them. But you'll have someone in authority giving you permission to do so.
More likely is they'll take them and store them somewhere, and you'll never see them again. Which is too bad, but it's still the right thing to do.
It is truly admirable that teachers will spend their own salary on supplies, but they need to stop doing it. The school board will eventually make up the difference, but will be happy to let them dip into their own pockets until then. I also think they need to go home every day at 5PM and leave their work behind, unless there's overtime pay (some states do, most don't).
Lets say your company sent you to install some software at a client site, but you have to supply the server. Would you do it? Maybe you would, if you were passionate enough about your job. Would your boss expect it the next time? Oh yeah.
And in regards to the federal level comment, school shouldn't be part of the Federal Government at all. Lets keep the taxes, the revenue, and the expenditure at the local level. Then, if you have a problem with the way schools are run, you can take it up with the county. Unless, that is, you prefer things like No Child Left Behind.
:wq
When I bought my house I decided to not move all the computer trash I had hanging around my old apartment. I discovered that I had 15 computers I had no use for. I dropped them all, 2 or 3 at a time, next to the dumpster. Each time by the next morning they were gone.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
http://www.willitblend.com/
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I miss just holding it.
nobody gets it anymore...you have to say hadoop cluster now.
A modern high-school math calculator that is solar-powered and can run rings around the previous generations costs around $15 in any fall back-to-school sale, and even less when they're clearing out their school supplies for the Halloween stuff. Both my high-school kids have several old ones (borrowed from teachers when their was forgotten, or lost and then refound after purchasing a replacement) knocking around in their drawers. I've offered them to their friends and friend's parents, but every one just offers me back their old stuff.
If you only need a basic calculator then yes that is true.
If you need one that can perform programmed functions like Mathematica, MatLab, etc. (typical for most engineering, computer, and mathematical theory students) then a TI-83 or similar is priceless.
If you need one that can do Reverse Polish Notation (typical of accounting students), then a TI-85 or similar is priceless.
If you need to have one that can help build integrals or derivaties quickly, then a TI-92 or similar is priceless.
There's a reason that most Pre-calculus and Calculus (and sometimes Geometry/Trigonometry) classes require a TI-83/TI-85 or similar calculators; and often the books have instructions on how to use them for the various tasks.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The only high school classes that typically require those calculators are ones where they assume you are on a college track (e.g. Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Physics) - e.g. there is 99% chance you're going to do post high school studies requiring those same calculators. They also usually have them around for exam time - some times requiring you use the ones they hand out so as not to have anything extra programmed in.
Algebra II (matrix mathematics), Trigonometry, and Geometry may recommend you have them, but shouldn't require them. However, those courses are typically requirements for Physics, Pre-Calc, and Calc - again, you're on a college track.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
but when you've got an assignment due tomorrow, and even if you get an extension from the teacher, you risk falling behind
Ridiculous. A graphing calculator does nothing that can't be done using graphing paper and trigonometry tables by an willing student. I dare say, being forced to learn how to do it "the hard way" (and there is no better motivation than a late assignment) might raise your intelligence a bit too!
Now, at work, I can't move a finger without my computer. But at school we had no calculators (they weren't needed, because we focused on the more interesting bits, the number crunching did not fit in our attention span). I bought my first (scientific, but not graphing, a cheapo CASIO) calculator for 30 euros upon entering university and started playing with bootleg versions of Excel around that time too. The damn thing still works and use it sometimes at work, and I haven't even swapped the battery yet.
Isn't there a Linux distro for them?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
How about a beowulf cluster? It should have about as much power as a Keurig.
I happen to live in an area that is pretty good for Craigslist usage.. I just post an ad in the free section, and whatever I put out will be gone in about an hour. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
If you wanted a calculating device, you bought a slide rule. You can still buy new-in-box Pickett's today.
The intent of the teacher was that if we didn't know how to do the math by hand, then having a calculator would just make us unable to do it by hand in the future.
Yea, that's the way our highschool was, but we still had students who couldn't afford them -- they were going to college on scholarships and financial aid. One of my best friends in highschool was among them -- single parent who I believe was living entirely off disability with three kids.
As for using them in college -- I graduated from Penn State a couple months ago, and I don't recall having a single math class that would have even _permitted_ a graphing calculator, let alone require one. I certainly never purchased one -- and never felt I needed to. And I took a couple of extra 400-level math courses that weren't required for my major. Hell, I don't think we were even permitted something as simple as a TI-34 in the exams. The classes were designed to teach you math, and evaluate how well you were able to do that math -- not teach and evaluate how well you could use a calculator.
Many tetri concurrently
So, FYI, it's not the Republicans who are standing in the way of a Federal Budget over the last few years.
The democrats are cowards who are unwilling to put out a budget that reflects what they want, and have a discussion on it.
The republicans are thoroughly entrenched in their ideology and unwilling to negotiate on anything, which makes it pointless for the democrats to propose a budget or try to negotiate a republican-proposed budget.
So if you are trying to claim that the republicans are somehow without blame in the situation, you are dead fucking wrong. If you want to say instead that they do not own 100% of the blame, there is some truth to that argument.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Send them to another school or classroom that doesn't have enough calculators.
Yeah, this should have gone to the second or third page. Definitely not the front page.
Everything you said is true, sort of. I went to a school that had piss poor administration and I would say about 90% of the teachers put in the bare minimum of work. The other 10% went above and beyond like coming up with interesting lesson plans and buying stuff out of pocket to make memorable projects. Those teachers definitely weren't working a standard 8-5. And guess which ones taught me the most?
It's hard to take a stand to make a political change when you know that it will affect children negatively and might not be effective in the long-term. Just look at all the crap the Chicago teacher's union is taking in certain parts of the media and political system. It's very, very difficult to affect positive change in the education system, and the easiest way for an individual teacher who wants to encourage something other than mediocrity is to do it themselves, rather than wait for the politicians and administrators to help them out.
Great post! I have to add one thing, though. You don't need a calculator for higher math. I've taken over 30 college math classes, and the only time I used a calculator was in statistics. The calculator cost around $10.
Yea, that's the way our highschool was, but we still had students who couldn't afford them -- they were going to college on scholarships and financial aid. One of my best friends in highschool was among them -- single parent who I believe was living entirely off disability with three kids.
As for using them in college -- I graduated from Penn State a couple months ago, and I don't recall having a single math class that would have even _permitted_ a graphing calculator, let alone require one. I certainly never purchased one -- and never felt I needed to. And I took a couple of extra 400-level math courses that weren't required for my major. Hell, I don't think we were even permitted something as simple as a TI-34 in the exams. The classes were designed to teach you math, and evaluate how well you were able to do that math -- not teach and evaluate how well you could use a calculator.
Calculus I & II typically requires a graphing calculator. That said, there are times when they may forbid their use as they want to make sure you can actually do the work; and they may provide calculators for tests too. Physics is another. Now, not every major requires those classes. As a CS student, I had to have Calculus I & II, and we were required to have one.
That said, policy changes from school to school, and some schools may try to teach without them while others will try to make sure you can do the work without them but allow them for convenience, and others may rely solely on them.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Calculus I & II typically requires a graphing calculator. That said, there are times when they may forbid their use as they want to make sure you can actually do the work; and they may provide calculators for tests too. Physics is another. Now, not every major requires those classes. As a CS student, I had to have Calculus I & II, and we were required to have one.
That said, policy changes from school to school, and some schools may try to teach without them while others will try to make sure you can do the work without them but allow them for convenience, and others may rely solely on them.
I was a CS student as well. I was required to take Calculus I, II, and III (as well as plenty of other math classes; also took a couple non-required 400 levels) as well as two physics courses (Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism) and while we were permitted a graphing calculator in class and for homework (or a computer, or phone, or anything else...), I don't recall seeing many students using one. As I said, I never had one (though I did occasionally use Maxima for homework; great software) But they were NEVER permitted on exams. Physics classes would usually let you use a TI-34 or something for exams if you REALLY felt better having it (they made a point of stressing no calculators should be needed; I never used one) but math exams were usually nothing but paper and pencil. And maybe notes for some profs.
That would be a school by school or class by class issue. Sort of like how geometry sets are on every supply list but rarely used. There are certainly teachers who not only will say to pull out your graphing calcs but have a limited set of allowable units; often these units are TI-83 TI-84 and sometimes for more advanced things the TI-89.
Yeah, I only buy new cars and houses - and when I'm done with them, I just give them away. Selling used items is pathetic.
...like Zaphod Beeblebrox's 'used Biro business'.
I lost one of those years ago when they worth a lot of money. No one spent anytime trying to get mine back to me. NOW GIVE IT BACK!
The point being that teachers are committed to their work (at least a good portion) but the idea that the school board will make up the difference isn't realistic without grass roots support and pressure. The trouble with your attitude of, teachers should stop buying supplies and go home at 5pm ignores the central first principle here of teaching the kids. That is tantamount to Rommey's statement the GM should just go bankrupt, jobs and lives and families and kids be damned.
As to the Federal govt involvement, absolutely!, just like insurance companies sharing risk across populations, sharing costs across population enables a more even education across all types of counties and local jurisdictions. I think we have a responsibility to have as even a educational playing field so our country can be a meritocracy not an aristocracy (which is where we are heading). We need to be a democracy not an oligarchy Leaving it to local counties and you better not be born in Appalachia, or rural Mississippi.