Slashdot Mirror
For Education, Why TI-83 > iPad
theodp writes "Writing in The Atlantic, Phil Nichols makes a convincing case for why educational technologies should be more like graphing calculators and less like iPads. Just messing around with TI-BASIC on a TI-83 Plus, Nichols recalls, 'helped me cultivate many of the overt and discrete habits of mind necessary for autonomous, self-directed learning.' So, with all those fancy iPads at their schools, today's kids must really be programming up a storm, right? Wrong. Nichols, who's currently pursuing a PhD in education, laments, 'The iPad is among the recent panaceas being peddled to schools, but like those that came before, its ostensibly subversive shell houses a fairly conventional approach to learning. Where Texas Instruments graphing calculators include a programming framework accessible even to amateurs, writing code for an iPad is restricted to those who purchase an Apple developer account, create programs that align with Apple standards, and submit their finished products for Apple's approval prior to distribution.'"
Give them something that will actually be useful in the real world--a netbook with octave. It's certainly a heck of alot easier to learn then TI Basic for doing anything useful.
Also you could give the python with numpy if they need a programming language that extends beyond math.
Hell, even give them mathematica (Although it wouldn't be free like octave or python..)
Another "journalist" who can't be arsed to do a trivial google search to check the facts behind the thesis of his article. You can program in python, ruby, octave, or several other languages on an iPad. Even one of several variants of basic, if you want. If you really love the TI-83 you can even emulate that.
Plus read textbooks, scientific papers, manuals, etc.
Kudos to the slashdot editors and the submitter for their incredulity as well.
I teach college physics: my students use both iPads and TI calculators. But almost none of them use the programming features on either the calculator or the iPad. It's a rare student who has a creative spirit that's strong enough to bother learning to program on any device, and those that have that drive to make things will find a way to do it on any device they can get their hands on.
And while *you* might have learned to program on a TI, you're a Slashdot reader, you were that rare student. And let's be honest: as a programming interface, the TI is hideously awful.
The average student would never program their calculator.
That's some very good "No Child Left Behind" logic you've got there. Next up: the average student does not play football.
I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer—should learn a computer language, because it teaches you how to think. -Steve Jobs
-Creates the most closed-walled operating system, and charges to program for it.
-Uses obscure and illogical languages for his walled garden's standard
-Perpetually disrespects other platforms and options which are open-source and available to 'teach people to think'.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits