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.'"
Quite interesting
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
If TI-83's were made by Apple, you could calculate any number except 5318008.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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..)
The average student would never program their calculator.
Why bother trying to type up some hodgepodge calculator games when you can download Angry Birds for 99 cents?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Aren't emulators against Apple's policy? I mean, think about it, if you could download C64 games that are on par or superior to the average 99 cent Apple Store game...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, when pointed out that a cheap calculator is a much better educational deal than an expensive tablet, your answer is 'install an emulator on the expensive tablet'?
Just when I thought Apple fans couldn't sink any lower...
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
The ipad is not meant to be that kind of device. It replaces lugging around heavy text books. It mostly replaces lugging around a laptop. It's a conduit for researching on the web. But it's not a device particularly for hacking, computer programming and so forth. Would it be nice to have a device good at both? Sure, but it doesn't mean the ipad isn't great at what it is. Not everyone wants to be a programmer.
You can't run interpreted code on iStuff.
IOS SDK TOS 3.3.2
"3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any
means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other
frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in
an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)."
"The iPad is among the recent panaceas being peddled to schools..."
Now get the new and improved panacea that I personally endorse. That other panacea is crap.
If only there was an open source system, with freely downloadable resources, and could run a standard simple programming language like Python.
Oh wait, there's this Android thing...
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Still halfway to reading the article, but I did a quick browser search. There are several instances of "ipad" in the article but no mention of the terms "Android" or even just "tablet". Why does Apple have such a lock on the educational system that it's effectively created a duopoly with Microsoft? Macs and now iPads for the rich or talented kids, Windows PCs for everybody else.
> You can't run interpreted code on iStuff.
You can indeed run interpreted stuff on iOS. You just can't downloadand run interpreted code. There is, for example, and excellent HP42 simulation for iOS (Free42) that allows you to program it, just as you would an HP42. Presumably, the only way to share code on an iOS interpreter would be to share listings. Which is what we did back in the 80s anyway.
Sounds like someone needs to take a look at Pythonista - a full featured development environment, including code editor with syntax highlighting and code completion, interactive prompt, support for graphics and a touch interface, with full featured libraries including math and text processing; runs on iOS (iPhone and iPad) you can even export the app you've developed and have running on your iPad to Xcode so that you can build it for submission to Apple's App Store.
It's a staple on my iPad and has been for a year or so.
Sounds like a bit more useful than a graphing calculator.
rob.
techBASIC is an amazing BASIC programming environment available from the App Store. It has good built in libraries for graphics and interfacing with Bluetooth sensors. It also has lots of useful example programs to start from. It is fun to tinker with and I think it would be a great tool for education.
Shhhh! Don't tell these guys because they don't know that-- they went ahead and wrote a BASIC interpreter for iPad in 2010 and it's now up to version 3.5.
There are also Ruby and Python interpreters available too and Pythonista is also a fully featured development environment.
rob.
Stupid Anonymous Coward - fits in the Apple Fanboy category. Users naturally see the iPad as a computer - that's what it is, right? And it's assumed that a computer can do everything than a calculator can, making the calculator obsolete. The Fine Article points out that this is not the case, and that teachers, parents and students should think about this when deciding what to promote in the classroom.
Fact is that the iPad is a gimped consumer toy compared to a computer or calculator, great for glossy illustrations in elementary school, but when it's time to do some heavy lifting, it falls short.
c++;
Your Post is completely wrong.
Just go to the AppStore and search for "Basic" or do a google search.
See e.g. www.misoft.com, a nice Basic for the iPad and iPhone!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
> You wouldn't want just any Jerome Doe being able to write prescriptions for norepinherine would you?
Yes you would.
While the "authorization" part of this bad analogy might be a problem, the consumer knowledge aspect of this hits on a very important point. You should never seek to make yourself helpless or at the mercy of people that know more than you do. This is especially true when all you really need to do is pick up the right reference manual.
It can quite literally be a matter of life and death as many of these "authorize" and "trained" indidviduals SCREW UP on a regular and ongoing basis.
You're funny. The PDR is even more accessible than documentation about programming.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Did you read the fine article? No you didn't. This guy is not a programmer, he's not been programming since that calculator. He's an English teacher.
For those like me who did not become programmers, whose notebooks of code and illustrations sat untouched in a musty basement for the last decade, learning to program taught habits of mind that persist to this day in small yet vital ways.
His point is that iPad is a dumb device meant for passive intake of information, but many still assumes it's more advanced than the old calculators, thus a better tool for students.
c++;
You should never seek to make yourself helpless or at the mercy of people that know more than you do.
When you have a culture in which average people believe thinking and reasoning is a terrible burden to be avoided or offloaded at every opportunity, you naturally will observe the kind of dependency and vulnerability you point out here. It leads to people who don't want to be involved in decisions that drastically affect their own lives.
Somehow there arose this myth that you either know nothing at all, or must be a fully trained expert, that no intermediate level of knowledge, no amount of reference could ever be useful.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
...The best calculator for education (IMO) is none at all. I'm not writing this as a luddite (or not entirely): I own an HP48G+ and a TI-89, and I'll admit that they are a useful means to take the gruntwork out of a lot of calculations (especially the TI-89 with its capacity for symbolic differentiation and integration).
My contention is that any calculator often tends to become a crutch that actually gets in the way of learning, in the sense that it effectively encourages the student to spit out the "answer", when the point is to understand how it is obtained.
When I studied first-year maths at Uni, most of my fellow-students never even got to grips with the fundamental theorem of calculus, which of course means that for the entirety of the course, they were parroting little mini-formulae without really understanding how it fitted together. And using any calculator to find points of inflexion on a curve is just a big time-waster when you can scribble them with a pencil much faster than you can punch the keys.
Getting back to my earlier remarks about gruntwork, though, my best choice for this - if only it existed- would be a TI-89 that does RPN (with the nice clicky keys and the big "Enter" button exactly under the index finger). Fat chance...
Because under the policy of at least one school, any handheld device running iOS or Android would need to be placed in the student's locker no later than the first bell and removed from the locker no earlier than the final bell. Exceptions can be made for students using special education services on the student's Individualized Education Program.
No because apple is quickly becoming the gatekeeper of what our kids can see and learn.
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.
What I don't understand is why, when schools are facing record-low budgets(thanks, war-profiteering asshole politicians), are they buying the most expensive option for tablets?
Why do they not have a pile of the HP TouchPads (super cheap, around $200US) and just run Android on them? They are large, the screen looks fantastic, it's cheap as dirt, and it runs the most popular mobile OS.
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
Holy christ, write a fucking emulator without the serial port support then.
Jesus H. Christ. There is nothing stopping you from typing in your own programs, or cutting and pasting them in, or even loading & saving them via a dropbox/icloud stores, cutting a pasting from a web page, saved text file or similar. All of which are a lot simpler than connecting two devices via a serial cable.
Number of engineering schools I've attended: 2.
Number of engineering degrees I hold: 2.
Number of TI programmable calculators I've owned in my life: 6, including 2 TI-83's.
Number of other programmable calculators I've seen other people using in my life: several hundred, easily. Perhaps thousands.
Number of times I've ever seen anybody transfer a program from one TI-8x calculator to another over the serial port: 0.
a free Apple developer account wasn't enough to view the Guidelines.
Well, you could sign into apple's developer website with your free account and read the latest ones.
I did that. It didn't work.
Five minutes ago, I visited the Guidelines index, clicked the link "App Store Review Guidelines", was prompted to log in with my Apple ID, and was redirected to the unauthorized page: "Sorry, you cannot access this page."
Part true.
Apple used to forbid emulators in the App store. They have since revised that policy: Emulators are permitted, so long as they can't run any externally sourced code. They have to be limited only to ROMs included in the app itsself. This means you can get '99 classic NES games' bundles and things like that.
Officially, Apply claims this is because emulated code has performance costs. Really, the reason is widely assumed to be concerns over competing with their own App store (emulator+pirateroms, never buy a game again!) or appearing to endorse piracy by supporting software that is primarily used for playing games copied without permission.
Because Apple has great marketing and has continuously been marketing to naive school boards since the 1970s. Also the mass media is getting into the picture, they either use "iPad" as a synonym for all tablets or mistakenly report on it as if it's the most advanced and capable.