Calculus - Coming Soon To Your Computer

I was googling "teaching calculus with technology" and came across this story about a Calculus teacher in North Carolina who broke her kneecap but was able to teach from her home using Skype and Smart boards. I tutored a student recently using a screen-sharing application that let her see what I was graphing as I was graphing it. When I was solving equations, I typed the steps into a word processing document so there were no worries about handwriting or issues like that. I'm fascinated by the opportunities computers and the 'net create for teaching and learning anywhere. Similar to the students in the story (who were not intimidated by new technology), the teachers of the future will consider technology as natural a component of their classroom as a chalkboard.

In fact, I consider a graphing application like Geogebra (no, I'm not paid to mention it, but I should be!) a natural extension of the chalkboard. If my old teachers could have drawn a straight line or perfect parabola with a click of a mouse, I like to think they would have.

But I see the calculus class videos MIT has posted on Youtube and they're writing and drawing on a chalkboard! MIT! At least the Stanford folks use whiteboards in their vids. I guess when you're an A-list professor nobody questions your reliance on stone age technology. When you teach math-crazed MIT students you probably don't need to innovate much. In fact, I received a reply from a professor I'd emailed about The Fun Calculus Program who politely suggested "building math systematically" is a better approach than "jumping ahead and using discovery."

I politely disagree.