"The TI-92 as a Vehicle for Teaching Algebraic Thinking"

Edward S. Miller * 
Laura Bracken * 
Lewis-Clark State College


This presentation illustrates the impact of the changing technological 
playing field has on the balance between the need for fast manual 
algorithms and the depth of conceptual understanding which students may 
achieve. The central example will be the controversial issue of factoring. 
Factoring polynomials over the integers has been programmed into the 
TI-92. Some would argue that this makes the teaching of factoring 
obsolete. A better inference is that students need not learn fast 
algorithms as a vehicle for solving equations or reducing fractions; they 
may now learn one or two algorithms and concentrate on what factoring is 
together with its role in the manipulation of algebraic objects. We as 
mathematics teachers are now free to use the power of the properties of 
rings (of real numbers, polynomials, continuous functions) in intermediate 
algebra or earlier.