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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Becoming CAI literate
Message-ID: <4812@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 88 14:58:38 GMT
References: <776@zippy.eecs.umich.edu> <3316@killer.UUCP> <3221@arthur.cs.purdue.edu>
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Reply-To: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu.UUCP (Stephen Smoliar)
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In article <3221@arthur.cs.purdue.edu> tlh@cs.purdue.EDU (Thomas L. Hausmann)
writes:
>
>I HOPE you mean that PROGRAMS to do multiplication drills are silly.  For if
>students are trained to use calculators instead of doing the simple arithmetic
>by hand, they will be crushed down the road when it comes time to solve 
>equations symbolically (having to do some symbol pushing.) The skills
>developed
>by NOT using a calculator are invaluable.  I can forsee complaints like
>"...what do you mean "solve in terms of x, x is not a number!" coming from
>students because they are used to having push button answers.
>
>Use of calculators in the classroom is not a solved issue.  However, I
>advocate that teachers either observe carefully how they are used or simply
>do not allow them on examinations (in high schools.) I fear that too many
>students will use them as a crutch for true understanding.  (For example,
>I have seen college students use the stat functions to enter data and do
>calculations and arrive at correlation coef's of 1.2 or negative
>probabilities.
>All because they believe the "calculator is right." I fully realize that
>if they KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING they wouldn't make these mistakes.  It is
>important (at least to me) that students understand they don't NEED a
>calculator
>to do everything.  (Can you say divide by 10? 10000? 10E-50?)
>
I think that a good deal of the problem stems from teachers who think the
objective of mathematics education is to get the student to "effectively
emulate" a calculator.  While such emulation practices are valuable in a
clutch, overemphasizing them takes time away from the cultivation of skills
which should not rely on the calculator.  "Knowing what you are doing" is
certainly a case is point.  A more modest example is estimation.  In all
the formal education I received, I never had a teacher who emphasized getting
the right order of magnitude for a result, as opposed to getting ever last
digit exactly right.  Since I come from the dark ages of the slide rule, I
had to train myself in this technique in order to get any use out of that
tool.  Now it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this skill may have 	
deteriorated entirely.