As a follow-up to my previous post, I would like to ask a question. When was the last time you ever heard an awful teacher admit his or her incompetance?

The fact is that before calculators, bad teachers blamed their problems on note-passing, doodling, and daydreaming. When will the day come when these inept teachers concede their inadequacies and exert their effort into improving their methods, instead of complaining about calculator games?

O.K. Here goes. #1)I don't know where you live, but I have never had a teacher take my calculator away. maybe tell me to put it up, but thats it. #2) They cant really pull the batteries. That can be considered vandalism. And so what....If youre really slick, you have more than 1 calculator, that way you can still play if they take 1 away. And I agree with the above statements, that if you are quiet and being respectful, they wont say anything. But if you jump up and down screaming "I got the high score on ZTetris!!!!!!", then i could understand. but the calculator doesn't force you to play it...if it starts talking to you saying "play me", then that just means you have NO self control. there is a time and place for everything, and englsh class might not be the time or place if youre failing...

Just my $.02

One may think that playing calculators in class is fun, but when you see your grades drop as mine did, you realize it and correct it. Now, I only play games when nothing is happening. Unfortunately, rules have now prohibited games, but the teachers usually don't care. 2 cents

A friend of mine recently wrote an article for our school newspaper about the same subject. I too agree with the writer that kids cant wait. I personally am one of the forefather of gaming in my school. Wow USCMP advanced algerbra..gonna need a TI-calculator so i can graph stuff. I decided to borrow my sisters TI-82 and heard about graph link. I saved my money..got a ride 40 miles(no staples in my city..closest is 40 miles away) and bought a graph link and found out the hard way that it didnt work on my computer. I traded it to a friend for his(a homemade one). Well in my guess 4 people have them in my school. I am one. We got games and they eventually got spread around and you cannot find a TI-calc(besides the school's) without at least Ztetris. I have all kinds of kids in classes that will blow off tests by wreiting down random answers and leaving others blank and proceeding to play calculator games. Well I am now refusing to put games on peoples calculators that I know will just use them at inappropriate times. I dont even play what is on my calcuator. very nice article and please listen to him people. 9 out of 10 teachers at my school hate games on calculators.

-Kevin

I am in almost the same situation. I bought a homemade link, found it didn't work on my comp, and bought a Graph Link. People were always asking me for games, so I finally said no games for anyone unless I felt like putting them on my calc. I'd estimate about 3 people have a graph link in my high school of 2500 people.I have two calculators now, an 83 and 86. I origionally bought the 86 for games after a few years of cheap programs I made on the 83. The last time I played an 86 game was about a month ago. I spend all of my time making games and math programs on the 83 I once deserted. Most of my friends that were origionally playing games in math are now programing their own stuff. I agree with one major point of what you said. People just get bored and stop playing the games anyway, so what diffrence does it make if a few people have them?
Ok, it's 3:37 AM, and I have been rambling. If it makes no sense, oh well. Good...errr.. morning.

David

Do you know many people who use their home computer entirley for word processing, spreadsheets, and other work, and NEVER play a game of solitare, doom, etc...

If you have a platform that can run games, why not?

I have had my own experience like Jimi's... Twice. In history class to be exact. My teacher caught me twice, but the funny thing was that while we were doing work, he started to play with the calculator and eventually called me to the back of the room to play calc-chess. It amused me, and I also agree that there IS a time for calc games. It's called Algebra 1 folks!

I personnaly don't think that games are a bad thing, when used with self control and mdoeration. It was games that encouraged TI to add assembly language support. Also I am proud to be starting a tradition of calc games at my school. I had purchased a graph link about a month previous and while using it dropped my 86. Then I got the 89, and brought it to school with games. My close friend Charles asked me if I could proggram his 82. I loaded it up with games and withing two days I became a major dealer at my school! It seems most students didn't realize the potential that there calculators held.

Same thing happend to me. I put games on one persons calculator, and now just about every one at my school who owns a TI calculator wants me to put games on it.

This artical is stupid. I agree with everyone on the self control issue. Nobody is making you play the game. Also, let's take a ride on the business side. You work at Texas Instruments. You notice that people are making games for the 80 and 81. You realize that some people are buying these because of the games. You put assembly on the 82. BOOM! People start programming, games come out, profits for you go up. TI knew about asm on the calcs. It didn't just appear there. They realized that people like games, so they made it possible. If you, as a student, get bad grades because of playing games, then stop! If you can't figure out that bad grades are caused by the calculator and your lack of self-control, then you ought to be getting bad grades anyway. This isn't ment to flame, just to get a point across. TI wanted more money, they added assembly, and that's exactly what happened, more money.

the 85 came before the 82

I understand your point. I just want to clarify a few things. The 80 didn't come out before the 81. I think the order was 81,85,82,92,80,83,86,73,89 if I remember correctly. All of the calculators have assembly, really. That's how the built in functions are programmed. (I assume)
People found a way to sneak their own assembly programs into the ti-85. The 83 and 86 were the first calculators with built-in support for homemade assembly programs. Assembly programs for the 82 are like the 85: people had to find a way to sneak them in. The only reason the 81 and 80 can't use assembly programs is the lack of a linkport.

You can find the exact order of the release of TI's graphing calculators by clicking the Calculators button on the left. Your order above is correct except you switched the 80 and 92. The 80 was released before the 92. I got the information on that page from TI, so it should be correct.

I agree that too many people are using these calcs as gaming machines and not a calculator. Most people in my math class don't even know how to use matrices on their calcs, but they know how to start up and play ztetris. Too many people spend class time playing instead of paying attention.

That's a good idea, but I really stopped playing games on my TI calculator after 8th grade. I've only played games for my calculator for about 3 days the first days of school. It was getting so bad people asking for games because the school had a TI-83 sale thing for real cheap, just about everyone bought one, and them asking me for games so much my linkport actually broke!!! So I had to trade my calculator back in at OfficeMax, I just don't bring games anymore. I believe that people should always limit playing games on calculator to off periods, or when teachers say that it is okay to do whatever you want in class.

-Stories

I never play games on my ti89 or ti82 when im in class (and neither should anyone else). People who like to play games during class should consider taking notes if the teacher is giving a lecture or if there is a discussion, participate in it. I have a maximum amount of games on my clacs and i usually play them inbetween classes, or on the bus, or if i'm done with an in class assignment or test or quiz or something early. The only exception i can give to playing games on claculators during class is when there is a substitute. Since subs dont know your name and cant call on u at random and usually just sit at the desk, this is a perfect time to cash in. But if you are in class with your regular teacher, are you really that desperate to escape your teacher's lectures with a chance you might get your calc taken away? Can't you just wait? i dont think classes are that long that you must pull out that calculator and start playing.

I only take my calculator to classes that require them. My english teacher doesn't know that you can put games on a calc, but he thinks I'm doing another classes assignment. That is why he would make me put it up. Other teachers know about it, but they say if you don't want to learn and you flunk then you know who to blame. I have had only one teacher make me put my calculator up and that is because we were in an adv. chem chapter that didn't require it. In small schools like mine, I doubt the calculators will ever be banned.

At my school I've only ran into one teacher who actively tried to catch people playing game, and this teacher's only job was supervising a study hall! At my school games are a fact of life, no one gets upset about them and no one has ever had thier calcuator taken away, period. People who have graphing calc have games, it a given, if they want to play them during class they can, if thier grades drop because of it, it's thier problem. Running around blanking calcs memory is for the study hall supervisor who thinks she's a real teacher.

Jimi, Jimi, Jimi, for a second you scared me and I thought you were Jimmy Mardell (or Yarin as most know him). Surey one of the greats in TI history (hehe) wouldn't turn on us. No, of course not, because obviously you have no idea of the power of the calculators and the power of the kids using them.
TI added ASM support but the ZShell, USGARD, and the TI-82 and first versions of Fargo were built on calculators with ABSOLUTELY NO ASM SUPPORT OR HELP FROM TI. Funny isn't it. You see TI can put on these things whatever they want, most of I don't give a damn. In fact, the asm capabilities only have made programing in asm harder where as ZShell and USGARD did a much better job providing the idiot user with a simple to understand interface.
In addition TI's adding of memory 1.) helps the math user because math programs in ti-basic take up a ton of memory, are slow, and you can only fit so many on your calculator. ASM games take up little space in comparison. Hrmmm. Lets see, before people like me build their own memory expanders stuff like this was difficult, if not impossible. Expanding the memory only helped teachers with math programs.
I guess being an ASM programmer for the TI-85 makes me biased. Does it? Well, I really don't care. Your opinion really doesn't matter and no matter what calculator teachers throw us we will used it however we please. We're teeneagers, what are you??? =)
I feel like I'm the oldergeneration. I'm in my first year of College now and I havn't worked on Abysmal Descent or Mega Racers in many many months. So I'll end this little comment with a shout out to Andreas Ess, Mel Tsai, Jimmy Mardell, Mangus, Austin Butler, and anybody else who I've forgotten in my sleep deprived state. Does anybody remember me? :)
-Will Stokes

I hate it when the teacher takes my calculator away. Its a good thing a have a fake memeory reset but it only works once per teacher. More games should have "teacher" buttons to prevent this. Kids shoudln't play calcs in class but i do and i do it at my own risk and at the risk of my calcs memory.

For me personally most of my teachers really don't care if you play them as long as you get the work done. There are a few teachers who mind so I don't play with them in there class. I can still listen to the teachers so it isn't a big deal