Hand-held technology in secondary mathematics education

摘要

While extraordinary gains have been made in the capabilities of and access to symbolic computation in many educational settings, there are still many secondary school mathematics classrooms in many countries in which student access to such facilities is either very limited or non-existent, either at home or at school. This paper focuses on secondary mathematics education for students and teachers who are without reliable and regular access to computers or to the Internet. While the arguments and analysis are of general relevance, the particular focus of this paper is on Asian contexts. The place of hand-held technologies, including scientific calculators, graphics calculators and integrated devices such as the ClassPad 300 will be considered, using examples from Casio, one of three major manufacturers. The computational support offered to students by such devices will be described and evaluated. Opportunities presented by hand-held technologies for students to learn mathematics in different ways than in the past and for teachers to teach differently will be described. The significance of hand-held technologies for the mathematics curriculum, its evolution and its assessment will be outlined and some issues associated with effective integration of symbolic computation into the secondary school curriculum will be explored.