Mathematics and technology serve the health sciences as demonstrated in this article, cowritten by one of our calculus students. Creating a lesson based on dosing an antibiotic allows teachers and students to see the immediate value of high school calculus and technology.

Activities for Students appears five times each year in Mathematics Teacher, promoting student-centered activities that teachers can adapt for use in their own classroom. In the course of the activities presented here, students will "look for and make use of structure" by observing algebraic patterns in the power rule and "use…

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.…

In Pre-Calculus courses, students are taught the composition and combination of functions to model physical applications. However, when combining two or more functions into a single more complicated one, students may lose sight of the physical picture which they are attempting to model. A block diagram, or flow chart, in which each block…

Dynamic/interactive graphing applets can be used to supplement standard computer algebra systems such as Maple, Mathematica, Derive, or TI calculators, in courses such as Calculus, Differential Equations, and Dynamical Systems. The addition of this type of software can lead to discovery learning, with students developing their own conjectures, and…

The fundamental theorem of calculus, in its simplified complexity, connects differential and integral calculus. The power of the theorem comes not merely from recognizing it as a mathematical fact but from using it as a systematic tool. As a high school calculus teacher, the author developed and taught lessons on this fundamental theorem that were…

The long-running debate over whether students should be allowed to wield calculators during mathematics exams may soon seem quaint. The latest dilemma facing professors is whether to let students turn to a Web site called WolframAlpha, which not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. In…

In algebra and precalculus courses, students are often asked to find extreme values of polynomial functions in the context of solving an applied problem; but without the notion of derivative, something is lost. Either the functions are reduced to quadratics, since students know the formula for the vertex of a parabola, or solutions are…

Calculus at the secondary school level has traditionally represented the peak of school mathematics in Australia, and has been available only to the most capable students. Until recently, many calculus curricula have focused on developing standard techniques, such as those concerned with differentiation and integration, with an emphasis on…

Research on technology-use for teaching and learning statistics is sparse compared to that in algebra and calculus. This paper addresses the deficiency with regard to teaching and learning about "trend" in bivariate data. Available research findings are reviewed and an empirical inquiry in a year 12 (upper secondary) class is reported. Treatment…

This paper concerns the analysis of a didactic engineering, the aim of which is to introduce Calculus, at secondary-school level, through the relationship between global and local points of view. It was designed for a graphic-symbolic calculator environment and structured in accordance with a learning trajectory from identifying the graphical…

Many popular mathematical software products including Maple, Mathematica, Derive, Mathcad, Matlab, and some of the TI calculators produce incorrect graphs because they use complex arithmetic instead of "real" arithmetic. This article expounds on this issue, provides possible remedies for instructors to share with their students, and demonstrates…

This paper provides an instrumental account of precalculus students' graphical process for solving polynomial inequalities. It is carried out in terms of the students' instrumental schemes as mediated by handheld graphing calculators and in cooperation with their classmates in a classroom setting. The ethnographic narrative relays an instrumental…

This article offers an introductory activity for the limit concept with a geometrical and historical foundation. A connection among Geometry, Measurement and Calculus is highlighted with the help of technology. The geometrical drawing, measurement and graphing capabilities of both TI-89 and Geometer's Sketchpad make it possible for students to…

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)