Technology Support: Calculators (continued)

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Calculators are more difficult to learn than computers due to the limits of on-screen icons and prompts, so explicit and guided instruction on a common model is recommended, especially for students with learning problems. Teachers should demonstrate calculator use through modeling (overhead projector versions) and think alouds. Students’ initial use should be guided with corrective feedback. Instruction may need to begin with locating each key and learning the effects of each function (e.g., pressing the key followed by a number and the will add to my previous amount).

Teachers should also emphasize questions to prompt accurate use. For example, “the problem states that we should find the average height of five students with heights of and . How can we use the calculator to assist us with this problem? My first question is about the form of the data—can my calculator add feet and inches? My next question is procedural—how do we compute averages on a calculator?” Students with learning problems may need other accommodations, such as larger keys and display screens, paper printouts for monitoring inputs and outputs, or prompting sheets with step-by-step directions for entering specific types of equations or creating graphs. Calculators may actually make advanced mathematics concepts accessible for more students, minimizing the number crunching and tedium of long or multi-step computations.