Although the mathematics community has long accepted the concept of limit as the foundation of modern Calculus, the concept of limit itself has been marginalized in undergraduate Calculus education. In this paper, I analyze the strategy of conceptual conflict to teach the concept of limit with the aid of an online tool--Desmos graphing calculator.…

Graphing calculator use is often thought of in terms of pre-calculus or continuous topics in mathematics. This paper contains examples and activities that demonstrate useful, interesting, and easy ways to use a graphing calculator with discrete topics. Examples are given for each of the following topics: functions, mathematical induction and…

Documents the experiences of 25 first-year university students with regard to the kinds of tasks calculus instructors should design in order to engage students in mathematical practices that often require the use of a graphing calculator. (MM)

Since the 1999 fall semester, the TI-92 Plus or the TI-89 has been a compulsory purchase for new students entering one engineering school in Montreal, Canada (almost 1000 enrolments a year). The purpose of this paper is to share impressions of a campus-wide experience and to communicate solutions adopted to help students and faculty members in the…

A teacher shares his successful experience in helping students understand the relationship between exponents and logarithms in high school and college courses. He presents the procedure that he used for teaching using a graphing calculator that shows previous calculations made.

How does your calculator quickly produce values of trigonometric functions? You might be surprised to learn that it does not use series or polynomial approximations, but rather the so-called CORDIC method. This paper will focus on the geometry of the CORDIC method, as originally developed by Volder in 1959. This algorithm is a wonderful…

Describes the use of calculator based laboratory (CBL) technology in monitoring the process of chemical reactions. Explains the estimation of infinity readings and criteria to choose t values. (YDS)

As part of the Electrical Engineering program at the Univesity of Southern Maine, students are typically introduced to Two's Complement algebra and representation, a method to include negative numbers in the binary representation of integers that is widely used in microprocessors and related digital systems. The traditional, procedural method to…

The concept of percentile is a fundamental part of every course in basic statistics. Many such courses are now taught to students and require them to have TI-82 or TI-83 calculators. The functions defined in these calculators enable students to easily find the percentiles of a discrete data set. (PVD)

Describes an inquiry into students' uses of graphics calculators in the Tertiary Entrance Examination of Calculus in Western Australia for 1998. Discusses a comparative analysis of boys' and girls' performances. Indicates that the main areas of difficulty for students are interpreting graphing calculator outputs and knowing when use of graphing…

Discusses the focusing effect of technology as a way of systematically accounting for the role of technology when students form ideas that are unexpected and unwanted by teachers and designers of the technology being implemented. Includes examples of university students using graphing calculators and mathematics software and considers implications…

Discusses the use of graphing calculators for polar and parametric equations. Presents eight lines of the program for the graph of a parametric equation and 11 lines of the program for a graph of a polar equation. Illustrates the application of the programs for planetary motion and free-fall motion. (YP)

Reports on the use of technology to enhance the teaching of ordinary differential equations, gives examples of laboratory activities using cooperative learning, and discusses assessment of student learning. MacMath, TI-81 graphing calculators, and Maple were used in the course. (Author/MKR)

The TACCOL project (Technology Advancing A Continuous Community of Learners) at Clarion University of Pennsylvania involves a collaboration between the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education and Human Services. The purpose of TACCOL is to infuse technology into teacher preparation by integrating technology with an…

Believes that the World Wide Web has great potential for delivering interactive computer-aided instruction using programming language like Java and Javascript. Describes a website on object-oriented microeconomics that integrates a textbook, mini-lecture series, graphical calculator, animated drawing program, spreadsheet, and regression package.…