Technology is a blessing and a curse when teaching advance math. It is quite amazing what can be done and seen. Websites like Desmos have amazing graphing and Khan Academy can tutor you on just about anything. Many of the publishers of textbooks have video tutors and short screencast for each section of their textbooks. In this way technology is such a blessing to math students because it intensifies their learning process.
Yet, like most good things taken out of balance and abused technology can become a curse, especially to teachers. If it is used incorrectly, technology can lead to cheating and plagiarism. Apps like photo-math and the website wolfram can easily be accessed and abused. Without discipline and ethical guidelines, these tools can make technology a curse. This can easily destroy trust that has been earned between the teacher and student. Trust can so easily be broken and so hard to earn back. Trust may never be earned back if a student uses technology to cheat on their homework assignments.
I want to encourage my students to use the wonderful technology available to them to better their educational experience and to be prepared for a technology rich world they will soon be apart of. Yet the need for boundaries and discipline urges me to warn them that there are real dangers attached to this technology. How do I help them through this mind field of “what ifs” and still let them learn and make some makes on their own? This is why I am convinced that technology, in all it’s many forms, is both a blessing and a curse.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra2/rational-expressions-equations-and-functions/simplify-rational-expressions/v/simplifying-rational-expressions-introduction