[Phys-L] Re: Calculators a Distraction?

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 16:38 -0800 2/5/05, Dan Folmar wrote:
> I'm a fairly new teacher; and I'm currently teaching Applied,
> General, Honors, and AP physics at the high school level.  One thing
> I've observed regarding students' performance on tests is that they
> rely too much (or at least more than I would like) on their
> calculators.  Lower level students will punch some numbers in, hit
> enter, and write down any answer that looks reasonable.  Higher
> level students (particularly, AP students) can avoid writing down
> the steps of their solutions (and writing out the units and showing
> me their thought process) by letting their programmable calculators
> do most of the work.
>
> I'm interested to hear the group's opinion on giving "no calculator"
> tests.  These tests would still include difficult problems; however,
> the actual calculation pieces would work out so that the work could
> be done manually without too much additional time.  Alternatively,
> solutions would be written in terms of fundamental units rather than
> numbers.
You actually get the students to only write down the reasonable
answers? If you've gotten them to do that, you've made tremendous
progress. :-)

I would never let the students get away with saying they did all the
intermediate steps on their calculator. I insisted that they work
through the algebra and write out at least the major steps, getting
an algebraic answer before putting in any numbers. then if they put
in the numbers and got a wrong answer from the correct final
expression, I didn't penalize them too much, unless they wrote down
something ridiculous, like a speed of 10^35 m/s (I've actually had
numbers like that turned in), or something outrageous.

Being able to use a calculator to do many of the problems is an
essential skill, but they still have to know what it is they're doing
with it.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
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<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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