So I’m settled on the laptop.
DS will take my fairly new MacBook Air to school (reducing unnecessary new purchases.) Bye mac :((
No, I won’t get him a PC desktop. (Hope his roommate’s mom would thank me.)
If he wants iPad at some point, he will get mine and I’ll go back to using the iPad 1.
Pretty soon I may be using Mac Classic or IBM XT (Good thing I held onto those, you never know when you’d need them)
DS’s school requires TI Nspire.
So I’ll be forking out some money to get TI CAS CX.
He will probably take his old (middle school required) TI 83 along as well.
Which calculators do you use at school?
Do kids lose/get stolen/break calculators?
How many did you have to buy them?
I am grumbling because I feel the only beneficiary of this purchase is Texas Instruments.
Schools require to get TI calculators at 6th grade, never use its functions and by 9th grade when it might be useful, it is all banged up (at the bottom of the backpack), the liquid crystal display damaged or lost multiple times.
My DS had to get a TI Nspire at the beginning of 8th grade, took it to BS ( where it was also required), and is still using it (he’s now a sophomore). It’s completely fine, never damaged, lost, or stolen, and he’s not the most careful child. I’ve seen a few misplaced on the school community website, but I’ve never heard of one stolen, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. They also use them on standardized tests, you know. Do put his name on it, in case he leaves it somewhere. And good luck with that Mac Classic!
My son is taking BC Calculus at Andover and still using his middle school TI83 plus. N-spire may not be allowed for some standardized tests (ACT has stricter rules than SAT). so an 83/84 is helpful for those. I have found good deals on used TI calculators at Amazon.
I would recommend waiting until you start. My son’s school required a specific model. He came very close to buying one before school started, and we are so glad we didn’t because it wasn’t the one they specified.
We got emails with placement tests and gazillion forms to be signed and sent in a few weeks.
It says they ** require ** TI Nspire CAS CX so I’m getting that one soon.
Yes, it would be a bummer to get a wrong one then you’d need to get the required one at school store for $$$ with no amazon discount. past experience with nephew :((
I’m glad to hear that they tell you on the placement test which model! They didn’t do that last year!
Sidebar to this topic: If you have financial aid, you can use your book/supplies stipend to buy the calculator at the bookstore, which is a good use of the award. We did this and he still has plenty of $ left.
@skieurope I use my TI-30 from college, over 30 years ago. I replaced my battery-powered high school TI-30 with a solar-powered version, and it is still perfectly fine.
I would seem like TI should go out of business with an app for a tablet or phone that easily handles all of its functions. What is the purpose of requiring kids to have both the TI and a tablet?
Frankly, part of the reason is to make sure no one is tempted to cheat. They are allowed to use the calculator for (most) tests, both in class and standardized. Tablets can have other information on them (like formulas and the like), and it would be too hard to monitor everyone.
I understand the academic dishonesty concern for the SATs and other standardized tests, but not for a classroom of 12 kids who already have their tablets and books out. Perhaps they just want them to know how to use the calculator that is needed for the one test (SAT).
The calculators are regularly exercised- often when a question comes up, a student is asked to “plug in” and project their solution real-time as variables are changed, as guided by class discussion, etc. Tablets were only recently introduced (in the last 1-2 years) at @heartburner DS’s school, and so there is not the deep institutional culture in using them. There are add-in programs for graphing, etc. that are legacy that make using the TI easier. It does seem likely that in a few years the schools may transition completely over to tablets.
