Bringing Maths to Life
"Offering 'outstanding' education (as judged by ISI) The Park School prides itself in being at the forefront of technology innovation, adopting and using the latest curriculum educational aids to release maximum potential for its students. "
This is the opening paragraph in Casio's Education Marketing Brochure published for BETT, the British Education and Training Technology Fair at Olympia, London, January 11-14th. Following Casio's successful trials of the calculator in our school we are proud to say that our Head of Mathematics, Ms Liz Berriman (shown above with Tommy, one of our A level students), is working at BETT with Casio and their calculators, running two public demonstration sessions on Saturday January 14th.
The article in the brochure continues....
Liz Berrimann, Head of Mathematics at the school, describes the school ethos in detail. "When I arrived at the school I was thrilled that it had the vision to allow its sixth form Advanced Level (A Level) students to embrace the latest technologies to facilitate their further maths studies. This materialised with the adoption of graphical calculators within the syllabus. These calculators differ from mainstream advanced models in that they allow students to interrogate statistical tables and matrices with inbuilt pre-installed geometry features and, as it now emerges, a whole load more besides!"
Student and teachers are unanimous on one point, total ease of use - as shown by Year 10 students Hugh and Emily (above) and A level students Jess and Tommy (below). The Casio fx-CG20 features an easy-to-use navigation button that allows easy movement around the menu buttons and also an auto back feature that allows you to go back to what you were doing before without wasting time scrolling through menus and submenus. Students can easily move from one application to another and a simple but effective exit key allows them to go back one level at a time.
Our students who trialled the Casio fx-CG20 were so impressed and found them so easy to use that the Department decided to adopt them not just for Advanced mathematics but throughout the upper school. With its integrated Teachers' Kit it makes maths lessons even more lively and is particularly suited to group learning.
Liz elaborates: "The user-friendly design of the fx-CG20 (pictured above) means that the manual has stayed where it belongs, in the box. For instance in a complex distribution calculation you simply fill in the data asked for. Once you have mastered the concepts of each distribution you can dispense with tables altogether; in the normal distribution you are even given the standardised variable. Complex Number mode is easy to use, you just turn it on and get going. Graphs and tables work seamlessly together."
Liz summarises: "Each time I pick up the calculator I am increasingly impressed by what it can do. The very first time I used it I realised what a powerful piece of technology it is and whenever I use it I find out a bit more about how much it can do"
