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Record your own views about learning mathematics with technology. Do you think secondary students should be allowed to use scientific and graphics calculators when learning mathematics? Are computers a useful learning tool? What might be some of the benefits and disadvantages in teaching and learning mathematics with technology?  

Disadvantages firstly, would include an over-reliance on technology to do simple calculation and missing the significance of mathematical patterns and relationships. Deep understanding of mathematic concepts require student to make connections with similar ideas as learning progresses through each level of learning. (Theory’s learnt in 1^st year about scaffolding information to create new understanding). Students may miss basic understanding and learning skills that should become automatic as students progress, 2.5 x 4 =…  should not require any tech aid. Secondly, in the vast majority of classes, students know more about technology than the teacher and also students will have a vast difference in their technology ability. When this is the case the teacher needs to take precautions that all students are challenged at the right level for individual abilities, which is a difficult thing to do. 

Benefits of technology firstly would include not having students bogged down in tedious calculations (often getting these wrong) and missing the main idea of what you’re trying the students to learn. An example being, doing a table of values for a certain function, by the end of the table students may think that getting the right table is an end, but may miss the whole idea of plotting these values to create the graphed function. A scientific calculator may avoid this problem, provided that they still know how and why a table is useful. Secondly, technology is becoming normal in all aspects of daily life and students would benefit by utilising technology to learn mathematics as it is increasingly becoming expected that students will have a competence in using technology for any endeavour, both in and out of school. 

Undeniably the way of the future is technology and students need to be well versed in such tools, however, teachers need to make judgements as to wether a certain technologies are an aid to student learning or a hindrance to the student’s ability to make necessary cross-connected relationships and patterns. These judgements need to be made on individual topics throughout each course.