Technology in Mathematics :: Education School

There are many different ideas as to how technology should be used in the mathematical classroom of today. There are those who believe that students will not learn as much if they use technology such as computers and calculators, and there are still others that believe this technology can benefit students if used in the proper way. After reading many articles on the use of technology in the mathematical classroom, I have to agree with NCTM’s Technology Principle, which states that â€Å"technology is essential in teaching and learning mathematics; it influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students’ learning† (Principles 24). What the Technology Principle is not saying that some may interpret is that students will not have to learn how to solve problems on their own. The way I see it, the principle is telling us the very opposite of this. We all know as future teachers and current students ourselves, that we must understand the applications and why we do them to really understand mathematics. In other words, we cannot just memorize the steps of application and plug it into our calculator, but rather we must understand why the steps were done and what our results mean. After the students have shown that they understand the material and applications, the teacher may allow his or her students to use the calculator once the applications have become tedious for the students. For example, if we asked a group of Calculus students to find the maximum of a line, we would not expect them to graph the function by hand and try to guess where the point is, we would instead promote them to use their calculators to find the best estimate of the point. So, even in cases such as this, technology can be used to further demonstrate the reasoning behind a problem. It may be the case that we want our students to work on the application, and then again it may be the case that we want our students to be able to see what they are doing the application for. The only thing we really have to be careful of is not to let technology replace the â€Å"basic understandings and intuitions† (Principles 25). Technology can be a great tool for teaching mathematics because we can show and manipulate visual form with such programs as The Geometer’s Sketchpad and many others. Programs such as these help students to visualize problems, and can also help teachers better explain the mathematical concepts. One of the questions we hear a lot in mathematics is â€Å"why?† I can even remember teachers struggling to answer these questions with their crude drawings on the board or their wordy explanations.