Liveblogging at T^3 2013
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Just to bump this with my final edit of the day in the topic's first post:

After a short nap and some blogging, I headed off to a session on the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition with Margo Mankus, in which I learned quite a few math skills for the calculator I didn't know, and reinforced others. Between Margo's and Tom's talk, I filled in quite a few details to my own exploration of my own TI-84+CSE. I especially enjoyed seeing how Images are handled in such a way that using the Horiz split and the G-T split both preserve the relation between the Image in the background and the graphs on top. I even thought of a bunch of extra 84+CSE-specific skills I want to teach in my book.

The evening involved karaoke, hors d'oeuvres, and an appearance by Mayim Bialik. I unfortunately missed "Amy Farrah Fowler's" introduction, as I got a chance to meet and chat with John Powers, one of TI's senior developers. He has worked on emulation, the Nspire, and years of excellent hardware and software for TI. The night wound down with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" from Shaun at karaoke, preparations for my presentation, signing books to give out tomorrow, and of course, blogging! I hope Shaun will add his own content here.
Geopipe
Did you sing any? Maybe you should have gotten a video of Shaun. Razz

Anyways, I like hearing new info on the 84+CSE. Keep it coming. Very Happy
Spenceboy98 wrote:
Did you sing any? Maybe you should have gotten a video of Shaun. Razz

Anyways, I like hearing new info on the 84+CSE. Keep it coming. Very Happy
I did not sing, sadly, but I did record a video of Shaun! And glad to hear it; you'll be getting any and all additional info and photos we can get of the new calculator and all of TI's new offerings that we're able to share.
Geopipe
Can't wait to hear a collective summary and any transcripts from your guys' interviews!

KermMartian wrote:
The night wound down with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" from Shaun at karaoke...


Any video?


There are two types of people in the world: those who can extrapolate data from incomplete data
*bump*
Saturday morning, March 9, 2013
Other than the vital first step of getting coffee and a bagel at Starbucks, our introductory session of the day is with Tom Reardon and Mayim Bialkik (yes, Amy Farrah Fowler). We're learning about the TI-Nspire Apps for iPad, and some of the in-class math examples that they feel the Apps make more understandable. We're discussing examining simultaneous points on several functions at the same x-coordinate, areas of quadrilaterals and trapezoids, infinite series, slopes of lines, and more.

Tom and Mayim discussed an issue Tom touched on yesterday, that students will often get frustrated with the teacher, themselves, and math when they're told they're wrong. Tom advocated the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition's tools and the TI-Nspire App for iPad's tools as a gentler way for students to learn that they're wrong. Another pro of the Apps is that they let students work at their own pace, although I worry that they then lose their engagement with the teacher. After Mayim and Tom showed us many activities, Mayim was spirited away, and Tom continued the demonstration. He showed us the CAS calculator mode on the TI-Nspire Apps, he demonstrated the WiFi-based screen mirroring between SmartView and a handheld TI-Nspire (which I found especially cool), and how to buy lots of copies of the TI-Nspire Apps for iPad for $5 (not just one). Remember, as we previously reported, this expires tomorrow night, when the Apps go back to $30 each.
Geopipe
Can you ask what was up with the 48 K RAM chip thing? I specifically want to know why they went halfway between 32 K and 64 K. We now know that the ASIC supports RAM sizes of 32, 64, 128, and 256 K. 48 K is not on that list. They violated their own engineering precedent. And why do they never set the high nibble of port 21? Did the boot code team never get the word from the ASIC engineering team that the high nibble is supposed to reflect the total amount of RAM installed. Clearly they did, because the OS always does AND 3 when reading port 21. It's quite inconsistent.

KermMartian wrote:

The legality of emulation, as discussed here on Cemetech and elsewhere. I can't say too much about this, other than to urge everyone to use discretion with emulation, and to strongly frown on people using the BootFree + .8xu method of getting ROMs. I may or may not be able to say more about this depending on how some further discussions go.

This is perfectly reasonable. It's reasonable to say that TI intends for the license to use the TI-8x Equation Operating System software to be linked to physical hardware, so people who use an emulator as a means to avoid purchasing a physical calculator are pirates. But TI is doing is horrible job of making this clear. The clause should read that the end user is only licensed to use the OS update if s/he has sole and exclusive use of a physical calculator. Surely that's not an unreasonable change to request?

TI seems to think that they have a right to the revenue stream produced by emulators. But no such legal or moral right exists. They only earn money when they produce a product customers prefer over competitors' products. The way the clause is currently worded suggests that they are trying to circumvent the principles of free market economics.
I can indeed do that; I'll let you know what they say.

Saturday morning and afternoon, March 9, 2013
- Shaun and I attended a small session about integrating TI technology into simple algebra and math lessons. We learned about scatter plotting shoe sizes versus heights to estimate someone's height based on their shoe size. We used the CBR device to measure the velocity of a toy car with and without extra weight, in which students could hypothesize about which would go faster and test their hypothesis. Finally, we explored measuring pressure in a vessel with bacteria and sugar.
- I gave my own talk, "Teaching Beginner Programming Concepts with the TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator", to a smaller audience than I anticipated. I told them why they should teach programming, why students should use graphing calculators for programming, and how they could introduce graphing calculator programming to their students. I told them about my book, and handed out books to each of the participants.

- Shaun, Adrien, and I attended a panel with Mayim Bialik and two teachers, Ms. Stephanie Ogden and Ms. Sheri Abel. A selection of the Q&A highlights:

Q: How have the Apps changed how you teach math in the classroom?
A: Surprisingly, not much. Helps facilitate the lessons already being taught

Q: How has the technology changed the level of engagement in the classroom?
A: Students have many more of the "aha!" moments when you know that the concept has clicked for the students. Students seemed to have many of the same experiences with the TI-84 Plus series and the TI-Nspire series, where they say, "I get it!". In this case the main advantage is that the learning curve to overcome for the technology itself is much lower.

Q: Can you highlight specific activities or skills the Apps for iPad have helped?
A: "Domain and Range", and "Domain and Range 2", have given the students the ability to drag the functions and see what changes.
A: Presenting all sorts of problems more visually with the Apps give students a more intuitive grasp of the concepts across the board.
A: It forces the students to understand a lot of the algebraic structure behind the problems; they learn about the mat hby putting it into the Apps' templates properly.

Q: Can you talk more about how the integration into the classroom looks?
A: In my class, they pick up an iPad before class and drop it off at the end of class, as well as a handheld. Why both? Because I prefer to use the handheld for Navigator-based evaluations. Plus they'll need the handheld skills for standardized tests, where they can't use the iPad.
A: In my class, they have the textbook as an eBook on a second iPad, looking at the two side-by-side. They are able to use many of the Navigator features on the iPad, so I don't know if they'll need the handheld except for standarized tests in the future. I'm hoping because the handheld and the iPad are similar, they'll be able to make the transition seamlessly.

Q: What challenges did you encounter?
A: Getting files to the iPads via Dropbox proved challenging; they kept forgetting their credentials. As far as the math skills, there were few challenges.

Q: How much benefit do you see if just the teacher uses the iPad for instruction, and not the students?
A: We had something like that experience in our classroom, because we didn't keep the iPads after the pilot ended. I now have my own iPad, while the students have the handheld, and it is still helpful as a teaching tool.
A: My school did something similar; you get many of the same benefits without the additional cost.

Q: You touched on the engagement of the students with the software. How has the engagement between students and teachers changed?
A: They can communicate in different ways and more ways with the students; doesn't seem to distracted them much.

Q: If we have the TI-84 Plus now, should we go to the TI-Nspire handhelds, or the iPads?
A: You can indeed use just a single iPad to drive the instruction, as long as you're willing to let the students occasionally use your iPad to help drive the lesson, as they will have a good deal of intuition into using it. They'll then have a leg up when/if they need to transition to the handhelds.
A: The TI-84 Plus is still a very rich environment, and if you can integrate the two together, you'll continue to make the classroom more interactive and more exciting.

Q: Have you been using the calculator mainly as a player for activities, or as a graphing calculator?
A: In my classroom, we tend to do both. For conceptual understanding, I want them to be able to visualize the problems that they're working with in class.
A: I would say that I have used it in both ways, but that I mainly use it for sending and receiving documents to and from students. I can send out assignments directly through the iPads, then back through email.

Geopipe
KermMartian wrote:
The night wound down with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" from Shaun at karaoke, preparations for my presentation, signing books to give out tomorrow, and of course, blogging! I hope Shaun will add his own content here.

I hope this was documented in some fashion
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I think it's funny that two people missed this quote...

KermMartian wrote:
I did not sing, sadly, but I did record a video of Shaun!


I'm enjoying reading your posts, Kerm. Keep it up!
http://kaslai.com/
Oh jeesus me. I did miss the second part of that. As evidenced by my post above. Haha.

I can't wait for this video to appear on a news post or something!


There are two types of people in the world: those who can extrapolate data from incomplete data
was he any good?
J/K!

this is great, though i raise a questioning eye at the developer's excuse of battery life for not speeding up the calculator.

ssorry about the small audience for your talk about programming, but i guess some things cant be helped. Im certaint thought that those who did show learned some very great concepts, and word will get out about this.
Ephesians 1:7, What are you rich in?

Want to give me an Internet? Click here!
LuxenD wrote:
was he any good?
J/K!

Shaun actually has a pretty good voice, so I suspect the video will be quite good Smile
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KermMartian wrote:
Saturday was such a full and fun day, we had practically no time to do any blogging or posting. Among the highlights:
- After the TI-Nspire Apps for iPad panel, Shaun and I decided to take a short lunch break, and enjoyed Philadelphia burgers.
- Upon returning to the conference, we went to an excellent hands-on chemistry session, "Simulating and Building a Stem Instrument for the Science Classroom." We used TI-Nspire CX calculators with lab cradles and voltage probes, together with a simple RGB-LED-and-CdS-cell circuit, to create a colorimeter. We tried out our colorimeters with test tubes of red, green, and blue-tinged water, and learned how we could calibrate our colorimeters to tell the exact color of an unknown liquid. We saw how that could be used as a tool to determine the concentration of an unknown solution.
- I attended a 1.5-hour session entitled "Dynamic Programming with the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition Graphing Calculators" with Christopher Langhorn. He showed a group of teachers (and myself) how students could be motivated to learn to program formulae on their calculators, and as I did in my own talk, he spoke of how teaching students how to program is a very positive skill, will improve their test-taking abilities, and fsr from giving them a way to cheat, instead provides them with another tool to get more intuition into the course material.
- After a brief break, Shaun, Adrien, and myself attended a two-hour private cocktail party slash reception with Mayim Bialik and various TI VIPs. I was honored to get a chance to talk further to Margo Markus, John Powers, and Dale Philbrick. I met Melendy Lovett and Peter Balyta, and was happy to hear that Mr. Balyta was very aware of Cemetech and some of our recent projects and news items. We also had an opportunity to speak to Pat Milheron, which was a great treat. He told us about various fascinating details of his job, which I sadly cannot repeat here, but I know my colleagues like Brandon Wilson and Michael Vincent would have very much wanted to be there.
- The evening ended with a frank discussion with our contact Marianne Hancock from Golin-Harris, whom I must especially thank for her tireless work throughout the weekend to make the conference smooth, pleasant, and extremely informative. I can't share the details of our conversation, but it was enjoyable.
- Shaun and Adrien and I concluded our evening with pizza.
- As promised, Shaun's karaoke cameo:


Closing Session, Sunday morning, March 10, 2013
- Welcome back, an overview of the conference
- Photo montage of all the photos tweeted with #NspiredAtT3
- Video of TI-Nspire functions overlaid on photos of participants from sessions miming those functions
- Nick Lombardo, the student from Connecticut who won the "Bring Mayim Back to School" contest, introduced Mayim Bialik and spoke about his own enthusiasm for TI calculators. Shaun and I gave each other grins at the fact that he carries his calculator everywhere, as we and so many others of you here on Cemetech did exactly the same. My TI-83 held a place of honor in the left pocket of all of my pants until college, when it sadly was replaced with a cell phone.
- Mayim Bialik gave the closing address. She spoke of her interest in promoting equal access to great education, and especially an inspiration to pursue STEM fields. "Everyone has the opportunity to inspire someone." She's a "certified STEM nerd" (thanks @TICalculators for catching that).
- Mayim opened up a question-and-answer session. She was asked what Sheldon is like, if The Big Bang Theory will address Sheldon's apparent autism-spectrum disorders (short answer: probably not). Where do you see your life going in 20 years? "Of course I'd like to move out of the TV world and become a movie actress, but it's hard to make that change". Plans on hiking a large mountain this summer. How do you get females to take a more proactive role in their math & science education in the classroom? Tough question, hard to answer, the social dynamics of teenage life certainly come into play. "I think this is one of the main wonderful things that we hope comes out of this relationship with TI, and to hopefully put a friendly, familiar face to associate with this sort of technology. I largely speak to the media, blog posts, pictures with the TI-Nspire; these are the sort of things we are trying to get out there." "In terms of what TI has in store for me, and especially for females, we'll see what is in store for me. There's a lot to tackle. There's a lot more we can do."
- End of the closing session. Thanks and here's to next year in Las Vegas!
It says that the video is private, so I can't watch it. Razz

Edit: Nevermind. It works now. Razz
Quote:
My TI-83 held a place of honor in the left pocket of all of my pants until college, when it sadly was replaced with a cell phone.
I have to confess that an 82 accompanied me exactly the same way all through middle school, as did an 83+ all through high school. Though i'm surprised to hear you mention just one pocket Wink
  
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