Technology in Mathematics :: Education School

There atomic number 18 many different ideas as to how technologyshould be used in the mathematical classroom of today.There are those who believe that students will not learn asmuch if they use technology much(prenominal) as computers andcalculators, and there are still others that believe thistechnology can benefit students if used in the proper way.After reading many articles on the use of technology in themathematical classroom, I have to agree with NCTMs engineering science Principle, which states that technology isessential in teaching and learning mathematics itinfluences the mathematics that is taught and enhancesstudents learning (Principles 24).What the Technology Principle is not saying that somemay interpret is that students will not have to learn howto solve problems on their own. The way I settle it, theprinciple is telling us the very opposite of this. We allknow as future teachers and current students ourselves,that we must understand the applications and why we do themto genuinely understand mathematics. In other words, wecannot just memorize the steps of application and plug itinto our calculator, but rather we must understand why thesteps were through and what our results mean. After thestudents have shown that they understand the material andapplications, the teacher may allow his or her students touse the calculator once the applications have becometedious for the students. For example, if we asked a groupof Calculus students to find the maximum of a line, wewould not expect them to graph the function by hand and tryto guess where the point is, we would quite promote themto use their calculators to find the best estimate of thepoint. So, even in cases such as this, technology can beused to further tell the reasoning behind a problem.It may be the case that we neediness our students to work on theapplication, and then again it may be the case that we wantour students to be able to see what they are doing theapplication for. The only th ing we really have to becareful of is not to let technology step in the basicunderstandings and intuitions (Principles 25).Technology can be a great tool for teachingmathematics because we can show and manipulate visual formwith such programs as The Geometers Sketchpad and manyothers. Programs such as these help students to visualizeproblems, and can also help teachers better explain themathematical concepts. genius of the questions we hear a lotin mathematics is why? I can even remember teachersstruggling to answer these questions with their crudedrawings on the batting order or their wordy explanations.