zlacker

forget the app or phone

how about: a standardized test calculator specification, with careful boundaries around what is required, what is permitted and what is not.

Then let competition drive prices and features.

>>m463+(OP)
This doesn't really work in the classroom, because right now teachers rely on being able to teach exactly how to perform a given calculation. Have lots of different calculators with differing interfaces, some of which the teacher doesn't even know, and teaching becomes much more difficult.

>>CydeWe+Xh
Honestly that sounds like a bug to be fixed. You don't teach to drive exactly one type of car.

>>Quiark+3k
I mean, you sort of do! Every modern US car has a wheel to steer, a brake pedal on the left, a gas pedal on the right. Calculator UIs vary way more than that. In the US, you can drive a manual after training on automatic, but that's not true everywhere.

And in-car driving instruction happens with the teacher next to the student in a car they're familiar with. It's not like they're radioing to 30 students each in a separate car.

Also, the calculator is a tool to teach math. If someone gets distracted figuring out the calculator, they're behind. The student driver car is to teach driving.

>>smelen+Wm
Sounds like the UI needs a spec as well then.

>>CydeWe+Xh
Somehow other countries manage. For some reason Americans are simultaneously considered innovative and can-do minded but they are also so quick to throw up their hands "nope, can't be done"-style on so many issues that just don't exist elsewhere.

>>m463+(OP)
There already are standard(s). The problem is that virtually all math curriculum is based around the TI-83/84/89.

Honestly, there is a massive instructional benefit to being on a unified platform because it allows the cognitive load of the tool to get out of the way of the cognitive load of the work.

The problem is that TI has been pretty perfidious with their pricing and influence.

I hate to be that guy, but I think the only real solution would be to set up an open source foundation and create a unified standard for graphing calculator UI (including strictly defined key mapping/behavior) that would be applicable from Algebra up through Calc II. Then the market would be flooded with cheap chinese clones that can all run this firmware and cost like $15

>>intpx+1n1
> Honestly, there is a massive instructional benefit to being on a unified platform

Which is more than offset by the social cost of it being a monopolized proprietary platform. But since we have pretty good idea of what the requirements are for the common platform, it should be quite easy and, in the long term, a significant savings for a sufficiently large education body or coalition thereof to develop and maintain an open, unencumbered standard for meeting those requirements with a reasonable-cost certification program for those circumstances where certified-compliant implementations are important.

>>CydeWe+Xh
Then standardize the interface, too. This still doesn’t sound like a difficult problem.