Re: A86: TI-Speaker
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Re: A86: TI-Speaker
In our high school, whether or not you use your
own calculator or school calculator, you are required to sign a contract thing
saying "I will only use my calculator for school purposes, and will not play
games on it," or something to that effect. In middle school we played calcs all
the time and they didn't care much.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 5:16
AM
Subject: Re: A86: TI-Speaker
> the GPA consequences if I'm wrong. And I don't
see how
> sleeping or playing games is disrespectful to the students,
and
> I owe no teacher more respect than they've earned. (If they
take
> offence by my indication that their lecture is boring and
not
> benificial to me, perhaps they should revise the lecture, or,
if
> they can't, just not take personal offence.) The last time
I
> needed to pay attention in an English class was sixth grade,
>
just as I finished learning everything in the subject I was taught
> by
an institution of learning. And here I am doomed to take
> more
English courses in my life even after writing this perfectly
> good 200
word rant.
I agree with you about English classes. The one I took
last semester,
English 102 (which I'll be retaking...), basically involved
reading a bunch
of photocopied magazine articles (which you had to pay $20
for) about
pointless social issues (things like makeup, face lifts, etc.),
discussing
these in class and writing papers about them. About the
middle of the
semester, one of my returned papers had a note to talk to the
instructor
after class. He said that he could tell from the papers
that I didn't
really care about the course material and wasn't putting any
effort into the
papers (I suppose spending 4+ hours and ending up writing a
crappy paper
about crappy material is not effort). I told him pretty
much and
subsequently dropped the class. I hate having to take core
classes. This
is one reason why taking the English AP test in high
school would have been
a much better use of my time than spending hours a
day writing a game for a
calculator...
I somewhat agree with you on
with giving a teacher the respect he/she has
earned. Being forced to
attend class in high school puts you in a weird
position. There were
some teachers I really liked, and had a lot of respect
for, but would
lecture all hour and put me to sleep. This obviously gives
them the
message that you don't care about the class or what they are
talking
about. A college course is different. Whether or not it
is
required for your major, you are still choosing to go, and if you go
and
sleep or blatently don't pay attention, I think it is not showing
respect
for the instructor, the same as it is in high school.
Personally, if I were
an instructor, I wouldn't care if people slept or
messed around, some people
just aren't going to care no matter how
interesting you are, but it would
make me wonder why they showed up
everyday.
Though, one thing that got me in high school, is that people
could doodle or
whatever during math and that is fine, but playing tetris
on my calculator
is bad? If another student can pay attention while
drawing on a piece of
paper, is me being able to pay attention while
mindlessly pushing a couple
of buttons on a calculator such a foreign
concept? I don't know if anyone
else has this problem, but if I am
sitting in a class and not doing
anything, I _always_ fall asleep after
about 10-20 minutes. Something
mindless like drawing (which I don't
do, I'm not artistic in the slightest)
or playing on a calculator keeps me
from falling asleep. High school
teachers never seemed to understand
that.
> So as to avoid risk of being called off-topic, what are
some
> solutions you all have come up with to gaming in schools?
>
There was the one-hand trick in the old days, and all the
> fake mem
reset programs floating around. What about new
> advances in
on-calc programming (always a good topic)?
Since I am paying for class
now, I go, pay attention and take notes (and on
rare occasion ask or answer
a question). If I was going to play games, I'd
stay at my apartment
and play Quake 3. The only class in high school for me
where I
remember having a big problem with playing games or falling asleep
was my
Algebrea II Honors class, sophomore year. I had a TI-82, and this
was
before assembly on it, but there was always plenty of programming or
basic
games to mess with. Any time it looked like you were messing
with
your calculator (I once tried taking notes on it) the teacher would
yell at
you. Being me, I ended up just falling asleep a lot, and was
told once that
if I fell asleep again I would get a detention. I had
to clean a lot of
overhead sheets that day after school...
Fake
memory programs were never an issue for me, at least with teachers.
I
never had a teacher check a calculator's memory, except one time in
Algebra
II after a test the teacher checked everyone's equation lists to
make sure
they were clear (didn't want anyone copying test material) as
they walked
out the door. One thing I did find useful on the 86,
completely by
accident, is that if you set the flag for small text to write
to the graph
screen, every menu on the calculator then appears empty.
My friends who had
86's (most bought them due to my recommendation) loved
this as well. An 8
byte asm program that keeps those annoying people
away who would endlessly
pester you for your calc to play games was nice to
have around.
On calc programming is an interesting subject, but
assembly program source
usually is very large, and editing with a small
calc keyboard is tough. On
the 86 it is now possible, though it
wasn't out when I was in high school.
For calculators with flash rom,
especially the 89 and 92+, this could be
useful. The 92+ could prove
to be nice to program on, but I would much
rather just use a
laptop.
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