This article justifies classifying the TI-Nspire CAS Touchpad as a mobile device for grades 8-16 mathematics classrooms equipped with a Navigator system. The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 indicates virtually every secondary school aged child has some sort of mobile device. Yet, many school policies ban the use of mobile devices, preventing students…

This Ontario-based qualitative study examined secondary school and college textbooks' treatment of trigonometric representations in order to identify potential sources of student difficulties in the transition from secondary school to college mathematics. Analysis of networks, comprised of trigonometric representations, identified numerous issues…

When U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling announced in March the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, created by President Bush two years ago to address concerns that many students lack essential skills to become engineers and scientists, she highlighted the importance of algebra. "The panel's research showed that…

Roughly 80% of the math and science schools under the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (NCSSSMST) umbrella are non-residential programs, with about 18% residential and 2% both residential and nonresidential. Now numbering 16 (with the Tennessee Governor's Academy closing May 2011), the…

This paper describes an interactive activity that revolves around the dice-based golf game GOLO. The GOLO game can be purchased at various retail locations or online at igolo.com. In addition, the game may be played online free of charge at igolo.com. The activity is completed in four parts. The four parts can be used in a sequence or they can be…

If students are to understand inferential statistics successfully, they must have a profound understanding of the nature of the sampling distribution. Specifically, they must comprehend the determination of the expected value and standard error of a sampling distribution as well as the meaning of the central limit theorem. Many students in a high…

I report on the findings from research and literature on (a) use of symbols in mathematics, (b) algebraic/trigonometric expressions, (c) solving equations, and (d) functions and calculus. From these, some insights and implications for teaching and learning are derived.

One of most notable features of existing body of research in transition seems to be the absence of a theoretical model. The suggestion we present in this paper--to view and understand the high school to university transition in mathematics as a modern-day rite of passage--is an attempt at defining such framework. Although dominantly reflecting…

Computer algebra systems (CAS) have been around for a number of years, as has dynamic geometry. Symbolic geometry software is new. It bears a superficial similarity to dynamic geometry software, but differs in that problems may be set up involving symbolic variables and constants, and measurements are given as symbolic expressions. Mathematical…

This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning. The aims of the…

Beyond Crossroads addresses many of the challenges facing American higher education and offers members of AMATYC an ideal opportunity to respond energetically and constructively to these challenges. Notwithstanding the many efforts to improve secondary schooling, most students enter postsecondary education well behind where they should be in…

The Math Forum is an online resource center for pre-algebra, algebra, geometry and pre-calculus. Its Virtual Math Teams (VMT) service provides an integrated web-based environment for small teams of people to discuss math and to work collaboratively on math problems or explore interesting mathematical micro-worlds together. The VMT Project studies…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the activities designed and conducted with primary school, secondary school and university students to study the integration of alternative assessment and self-assessment online tools in mathematics courses using iTest. iTest is an educational software tool born to support the continuous evaluation system…

In order to get undergraduates interested in mathematics, it is essential to involve them in its "discovery". In this paper, we will explain how technology and the knowledge of lower dimensional calculus can be used to help them develop intuition leading to their discovering the first derivative rule in multivariable calculus. (Contains 7 figures.)

Despite increased requirements for high school graduation, almost one-third of the nation's college freshmen are unprepared for college-level math. The need for remediation is particularly high among students who are low income, Hispanic, and black. Female students are also less likely than males to be ready for college-level math. This article…