Digital technologies for learning mathematics

Last Friday saw the launch of the latest version of the TI-Nspire software - version 3.0. This has a few new features in addition to the already excellent version 2: Adding images You can now add images to Nspire pages, including as the background to a graphing or geometry page. This is a really powerful tool for relating mathematics to students' experiences outside the classroom. Differential equations You can also plot first order differential equations on version 3.0, where the derivative is a function of x and y. It plots a slope field indicating the shape of the general solution and particular solutions can be shown by entering initial conditions (as a single value or list). 3D Graphing The 3D graphing will plot graphs of the form z=f(x,y). The graphs are displayed really nicely and the window is easy to move. I'm very hopeful that later iterations of version 3 will have the ability to add points and vectors to the 3D graphs so it could be used to for the vectors/...

I’ve recently been exploring Microsoft Mathematics. Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 is free software that can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/education/products/student/math/ .  It has a number of features that are implemented very well in an easy to use format.  The ones that I have used are the in-built CAS, the equation solver and graphing screen. CAS The CAS engine appears to be the same as many others – it gives the same results as Maxima for many things.  It’s easier to use than Maxima though: entering and editing are straightforward and there are some useful options, such as differentiation/integration, that are offered immediately upon entering an expression.  Using CAS can make writing questions easier as shown with the example below. Equation solver The equation solver will solve any equation, as a normal CAS engine would do, but it also includes the option to display detailed solution steps.  Where there are a couple of usual methods, s...