From: Cheryl Szymanski
To: Teacher2Teacher Service
Date: Jun 16, 1999 at 08:48:33
Subject: Graphing calculators

I was wondering how other calculus teachers address the use of graphing
calculators on tests and quizzes.  I require all of my students to have a
graphing calculator in both my AP and Honors level classes and since many of
my lessons involve demonstrations and activities using a TI-83 calculator, I
allow the use of them on most tests.  Because some of my students have come
from different schools or have had different teachers in the past they come in
already owning a calculator that is not a TI-83.  I do not know the
capabilities of every calculator and do not want some students to have an
unfair advantage.  For example, this year a student had a TI-92 which I know
nothing about.  I asked him about the capabilities of things like finding an
antiderivative formula and he said it cannot.  I later found out it can and
since he had used it on tests where I wanted to see if students had memorized
such formulas he had an advantage over all of my other students.  How do you
make sure that this does not happen with so many different calculators on the
market and the technology changing so fast?

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