Kaye Stacey
In this presentation,
I wish to make two points and to illustrate them with two examples. The first point is that new technology is
providing us with wonderful new opportunities to improve the teaching and
learning of mathematics. There are opportunities
at every year level and through every facility on the new calculators: the home
screen, graphing, statistics, programming and, on newer models, symbolic
manipulation for algebra. My two examples illustrate simple activities that
provide greatly enhanced learning opportunities. Activities like these are now
commonplace amongst teachers using graphics calculators, but it is useful to
consider what makes them significant
On the other hand, I
see that the major issue for the profession as graphics calculators become
widespread is to prevent Mathematics becoming too empirical. Leading mathematics teachers will have to
guard against a tendency towards too much data collection (whether from real
situations or from number patterns) and insufficient analysis and reasoning. How empirical is too empirical is of course a
matter of debate In the final section, I will invite
you to respond to the dilemmas that face us.