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To find the comment I'm replying to, you'll have to scroll pretty far up, I didn't want to lengthen an already tedious thread up there. I believe Sam Heald was the author of a message that said, "by 7th grade graphing calculators are practically required," or something to that effect.
Call me old-fashioned. Call me technologically impaired. Call me an idiot. But until 11th grade, the only calculator I used was my trusty TI-35x. I have no idea what anyone would use a graphing calc for in Algebra I, Geometry, or even Algebra II, save some of the trigonometry usually found in Algebra II. We never used a utility to graph a function, we did it ourselves. We didn't save formulas as programs, we memorized them and did them ourselves. I never purchased a graphing calculator until last year, when I purchased my 86 for Pre-Calculus. I could have gotten through easily with a normal scientific calculator, but every once in a while my 86 came through with an easier solution. This year is the only year that I have ever been "required" to have a graphing calculator, in AP Calculus. And even with the "advanced" material, much of the work is still done with no calculator at all. Required? I think not.
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