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Please click here to get your TI-84 Plus on Amazon. UPDATE (11/16/10) TI-84+ SE not discontinued in North America As promised, I am continuing to update the original story below. Today, I received an email from Dale Philbrick, marketing manager for mathematics at Texas Instruments. Mr. Philbrick says that the internet rumors of the demise of the TI-84+ Silver Edition are unfounded and that Texas Instruments has no plans to discontinue the Silver Edition in North America at this time.

Best Uses of Graphing Calculators

By Tech Powered Dad in news

November 14, 2010

With the recent announcement of the Casio Prizm, graphing calculators have been getting publicity they don’t normally see. Gizmodo, Wired, Mashable, and many of the other major tech sites/blogs have run articles on the Prizm, and I’ve noticed a common theme in the comments on those articles. A number of people are questioning graphing calculator use. I’m somewhat used to this. On my Youtube channel, I get these same questions and comments, and on rare occasions they even come from parents of my students.

Math Nspired update includes Algebra II, Calculus

By Tech Powered Dad in news

October 20, 2010

Texas Instruments today announced a significant update for their Math Nspired website. If you’re not familiar with Math Nspired, it’s a resource site for the TI-Nspire, primarily for math teachers, but to a lesser extent for students. There are a variety of lessons, activities, and tutorials for teachers and students on the site. This latest update is a release of resources for Algebra II and Calculus classes. Previously, all of the lessons were for Algebra I and Geometry.

Goodbye, Father Fractal, Benoit Mandelbrot

By Tech Powered Dad in News

October 19, 2010

I don’t know how many of you caught the news last week that Benoit Mandelbrot had passed away at the age of 85. If you’re like me, you probably don’t know much about Mandelbrot, but you may be familiar with fractals, and specifically, with his famous discovery, the Mandelbrot set. Fractals are mathematical structures of infinite complexity. No matter how much you zoom in on one, you will always find more structures and designs within it.

Casio Prizm announced, is it a TI-Nspire Killer?

By Tech Powered Dad in news

October 8, 2010

UPDATE: It is now possible to buy a Casio Prizm. To get highly anticipated calculator, click here to buy your Casio Prizm on Amazon. UPDATE: My Casio Prizm review is now live. You float into classroom, hovering over the desks. All around you, colors are radiating throughout the classroom You make your way to the teacher’s desk, where you see a TI-Nspire Clickpad. Suddenly, in a flash of color, the Nspire transforms to a new calculator you’ve never seen before with amazing new capabilities.

South African students study math via cell phone

By Tech Powered Dad in news

September 24, 2010

The Associated Press reported on Thursday about an unusual experiment occurring out of necessity in South Africa. With students preparing for required graduation exit exams just less than a month a way, droves of them are turning for MXit, a popular instant messaging service, for assistance. Specifically, the students are using MXit to get answers to their math questions. Tutoring by cell phone was made necessary following a nationwide strike of South African teachers just before the all important exams.

Facebook-Ally in math education?

in Featured

September 10, 2010

The Hill is reporting that on Thursday math students and educators gained a new ally in the quest for better math education in America–Facebook. On Thursday, the popular social networking site sent a letter to Congressional leaders asking for more funding for math, science, and technology education, expressing concerns that if action isn’t taken, America will fall behind its competitors in these key areas. Excerpts from the letter follow: The shortage of students entering STEM careers has long been recognized in Washington, Silicon Valley, and beyond.

Lyric probability processor

By Tech Powered Dad in news

September 6, 2010

Since the first electronic computers were developed over 60 years ago, they have operated in a fundamentally similar way. Lyric Semiconductor recently announced a new kind of computer processor that is a shocking change in the math behind computers. You may know that computers “speak” binary, meaning that at a fundamental level, they operate on the base two number system, a series of 0’s and 1’s. The reason for this is that those 0’s and 1’s can be easily translated into what sort of amounts to a long list of yes/no or true/false questions for the computer to crunch.

New pi world record

By Tech Powered Dad in news

September 2, 2010

All hail Shigeru Kondo, the new king of pi! According to The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Kondo, a systems enginer, has broken the world record for the most digits calculated of pi, finding the ratio of a circle’s circumference to diameter to a mind-blowing 5 trillion places. For those unfamiliar with pi, it is an irrational number, meaning that when expressed in decimal form, its decimal continues forever without ever reaching a repeating pattern.