TI-Nspire with Touchpad Graphing Calculator Giveaway

A Calculator for High School…and Beyond

The new TI-Nspire from Texas Instruments, has a unique feature to it, a touchpad which allows you to navigate on the calculator.  With so many of this generation’s children having technology given to them almost right out of their cribs, this powerful computing device will take their math to the next level.  It is essentially a mini math computer.

Amber is currently two full years ahead of herself in math.  A freshman by age, she is nearly finished with her Algebra II credit and has her sights on working on Pre-Cal or Trig when she is done.  That makes this mathphobic homeschooling mom just a bit nervous.  I mean, how am I going to help her with that?!

I was completely overwhelmed with the TI-Nspire when it arrived in our home, and handed it over to my husband and Amber hoping they’d know better than I with where to start with it.  Sure enough they got down to business with it.

The Scratchpad is the main feature that Amber is using right now.  It allows for quick calculations and the ability to create graphs without opening a new file.

One of the cool features of the TI-Nspire is that you can see a math problem four different ways, either own their own sequentially or on the screen all at one time.  That lets the student see how math concepts relate to each other, and  hopefully they’ll come out with a better understanding of what they are learning.

Considering it is a calculator the screen is quite large, but the beauty of the TI-Nspire is that the work can be created, saved and/or edited on the computer as well, making it even easier to manipulate math problems.  Downloadable software makes it compatible, and it supports colors so the tables and graphs you create have a more visual impact.

We had some difficulties installing the student software on Amber’s PC.  We e-mailed TI for help, unfortunately a solution wasn’t found to why it wouldn’t install.  It did however, install fine on our laptop, so that’s home base for the calculator hookup now.

The idea of having a calculator that allows for interactive use via the touchpad and computer syncing, makes math and science exciting and hopefully that means the student is more engaged and therefore learning and retaining more.

If you’re a homeschooling parent of a high school student, you will find all kinds of activities for your child at www.timath.com, to use with the TI-Nspire.  Covering all the core high school maths, as well as Pre-Cal, Cal and Statistics there are a lot of fun and interactive activities to download and work through. 

The TI-Nspire is also permitted on college entrance tests like the ACT and the SAT.  Exciting for us, Amber has written the ACT the last three years with a regular calculator with no functions other than the + – /  X and = (really!).

If there is such a thing as a perfect calculator I think this might be it.  The TI-Nspire with Touchpad Graphing is more than sufficient for high school math and science and will certainly be carried on to college and beyond.

 

One reader will win a Math Makeover Kit from Texas Instruments which includes a TI-Nspire with Touchpad Graphing Calculator ($125.95 on Amazon.com), as well as the other items shown in the picture below.

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment letting me know who will be using this “inspiring” math computer if you win.  You can enter daily.

For extra entries you can

• Follow me on Twitter and Tweet about this giveaway. (1 extra entry daily)  You can tweet the following:  “RT @threedifferent Give Your Child a Math Makeover -Texas Instruments TI-Nspire with Touchpad Giveaway – http://bit.ly/TI-Nspire”
• Leave a relevant comment on any post on Play That Now (1 extra entry daily).  It must be a new comment each time, and previous comments aren’t eligible.
• Become a Public Follower of my new blog Play That Now (2 extra entries)
• Subscribe to the e-mail feed of my new blog Play That Now (2 extra entries)

Open to US residents ages 18+, ends September 11, 2010 at 11:59 PM CST. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.  E-mail must be in comment or submitted when entering.  By entering this giveaway you are stating that you have read my **Privacy/Rules statements and agree to them.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received the product mentioned above at no cost to myself for review purposes.  Please do additional research of your own when purchasing products mentioned in blog posts. This post uses affiliate links.

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