Technology in Mathematics

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 “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 “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 “why?” I can even remember teachers

struggling to answer these questions with their crude

drawings on the board or their wordy explanations.