Anyone else do this? At least for my generation, the cool thing to do in the back of high school math class was to pretend to punch equations into your Texas Instruments graphing calculator while your aging math teacher recited the lesson. But we weren’t doing our homework: we were doing programming! Our “TI” calculators came with a stripped down version of BASIC, with simple if-then loops, variable storage, key capture and everything. Why do pre-Calculus when you could be programming a game?!
This is why I’m loving Phil Nichols’ nerdy Atlantic article on his own TI-82 calculator experiences, and why some new gadgets at school—like the iPad—aren’t teaching kids the same thing.
Nichols’s point is that there are two kinds of education: “conventional” and “subversive”—and we need both. Conventional is the facts and figures and history that society agrees kids need to function. It’s recall, and right and wrong answers.
Subversive is different: it puts students into a problem solving, imaginative world that doesn’t require one route to a solution. It allows challenges to the existing norms, and demonstrates that failures are normal and help the process. Just like programming on a TI-82 calculator in the back of the room.
Here’s his point about the iPad: it’s a shiny new gadget for classrooms, but it might be more conventional than subversive. If we allow students to absorb only a few approved educational apps, it’s just a dressed-up textbook rather than an environment that allows students to discover and change and fail and learn.
I’ve always liked the word digital for this. “Digital” learning is less about the pixel count of the screen, and more about the ways that you can interact with and remix the environment. Sure, maybe “digital” cable arrives on the digital cable box, but from a media and communication point of view, it’s still just TV. The content is created one one side of the screen, and delivered to the people on the other side. It’s just nicer looking content delivery! But if you can edit it, copy and paste it, talk to it, change it… that’s digital interactivity at work.
By this definition, the TI-82, designed in 1993, may have been more digital interactive learning than a new iOS device!
So here’s to programming on the TI-82, the way it subversively taught me to trial-and-error problem solving I still use, and that we’ll find good ways to teach our kids the same!
Go read the whole Atlantic article for some super sweet screen-shots.
And am I the only one?
Did you program on a TI-82 calculator?
Chris Ridgeway says
The astute observer may notice that my photo doesn’t quite match my article 🙂
Eric Dye says
You’re too cool, Chris.
Ben says
I wrote a Tetris game on my TI-85 during my freshman year of college. Fun stuff, until it locked up my calculator and I had to do a hard reset, losing all my work. (I didn’t have the sync cable to back up to a computer over a serial port.) But I learned a lot about programming that thing.
Chris Ridgeway says
Ouch. That’s the worst. Yeah, for some reason, only some of us had that sync cable ( I guess it didn’t come with every calculator?). I had the cable, but mostly used it to grab copies of games that were better than mine (mine weren’t good). Tetris is impressive! Anything with moving graphics took some work.
Eric Dye says
Dang. That’s EPIC!
Eric J says
I did some programming on my 83 but it was just simple programs to make my homework go faster. And maybe changing game variables in dope wars to make it easier.
John Wilkerson says
There are a number of BASIC compilers available on the iPad. Some are free. Have fun!
Ben says
Sure, you can program on an iPad if you want to. But if you’re a kid, it can be hard to stay motivated to learn it when you’ve got Angry Birds at your fingertips. On the TI-85, there were no built-in games and no app store. We had to try to figure out a way to have fun on that thing.
Now get off my lawn!
Daniel says
And this is precisely why things like the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi were created – to foster this subversion among students. I’ve always wondered why (being a comp sci student and a software developer myself) my peers have been pushing for programming literacy to become as ubiquitous as basic reading/writing literacy. To encourage that creative tinkering side within people. Although I don’t feel the need for *every* single person to know how to write code, I feel that teaching people the thought-process behind coding is probably where the money is. This is very similar to how for the longest time Latin was a compulsory language in English universities – not because it was practical, but because it helped students think a certain way.