Imagine you had to look up every word you wanted to use, because you had a poor vocabulary. Thus, it is one of our responsibilities (as lecturer/teacher) to give our students problems which need that something more. For the latter you cannot beat Wolfram and the likes for the former, it would be beneficial to know how to use them (if needed), but you need something more. Mathematics is about solving problems not repeating exercises. But, no smart phone was of any help to solve the problem at hand, they needed smart minds. Of course, they all had smart phones and on their phones they had a calculator. Knowing that $140 \times 40=5600$ suggest a way to calculate $142 \times 39$. Following that, the question for the class was Basically, he started from $140 \times 40$ and found his way through to the answer of the initial question. One of the questions I asked was inspired with the way my son calculated $142 \times 39$ (that was one of his school procedural homework). Instead, I try to give an answer from a different angle based on a recent experience I had in a numeracy class with adult students. I avoid the temptation of repeating my answer for that question.
Any knowledge demonstrated on these assignments is fleeting, such is seen on the exams and in class.įirst of all, I believe this question is quite similar to the question " How to give homework for integration technique?". WAlpha has also rendered any meaningful outside-of-class assessment useless, as I will just get regurgitated output, or "trained" results from the tutors in the math center. I think we need to embrace it to allow us to go deeper, like the Ti8X's did. I take great issue with answers like "You won't have wolfram alpha on the test" or "Maybe the internet will break or the power will go out". I honestly don't know how to answer anymore. How can one possibly incentivize or rationalize assigning practice problems outside of class when this software is readily available? Math/engineering folk need to understand the algebraic manipulation behind differentiation and integration, but not the social science or bio-tech majors.Ī student asks me "Why do I need to know how to do this if Wolfram Alpha can just do it for me?". I teach to predominantly non-majors in college algebra, precalculus, and calculus.
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