TI-Nspire 3.0

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/3D geometry in A2 Core and A2 Further Pure.

Publish to web and new handhelds
A feature that isn't enabled yet but will be really useful is the ability to publish TI-Nspire files on webpages which can then be viewed (and interacted with!) in any browser. I'm hoping to have some on here as soon as this feature is live. The other major advance is the new handhelds featuring high-resolution colour screens - gone are the days when a pixelated screen meant you couldn't tell the difference between an asymptote and a vertical line and this really brings the technology into the 21st century.

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