Book Review by Travis Bower

Post date: Jul 01, 2011 6:23:30 PM

There is a wide range of ability in this user group. This book (review) is intended for the teacher who is new to Nspire. In particular, it is for the teacher who wants to implement Nspire in the Fall and cannot attend a 3-Day seminar and/or who learns well from a book at your own pace.

A lot has been added with OS3.0 for the TI-Nspire CX.

I’m a fanboy of Nspire and consider myself an Intermediate user. I read TI-Nspire for Dummies 2nd edition to strengthen my understanding. I teach high school math and want to be prepared for answering my students’ questions. The book is fabulous. For about 20 bucks the book is invaluable. I consider it to be a personal tutor at my beck and call. I plan to make it available to my students as a reference guide. Not only that, I have some colleagues who would benefit from reading a section before I answer their specific questions. Granted it does not delve into advanced authoring, but it has all the essentials for getting started with the 6 apps (plus the Questions and DataQuest).

The online Getting Started and Guidebook from TI are also great resources. I like having another resource in book form. I like the convenience of several options. Books are handy!

What I like:

He has a conversational and personal tone [p151, 242, 304]

He provides his advice when there are several ways to perform a task [p1, 112, 171, 241] This is helpful when discerning between the handheld and using a mouse/computer.

Lots of room in the margins to write notes to myself

You can jump in anywhere [however, sometimes he has to repeat directions on some basic procedures]

Easy to follow steps with screenshots

He is explicit and gives an example. Rather than just saying ‘You can perform many operations on lists.’ He uses the phrase ‘For example…and mentions Sort Ascending’ This allows my mind to hold onto that thought more securely. [p83, 273]

He has numerous Tips from his personal classroom experience [e.g. place the ‘sending’ calc on the left and transmit to the right just like we read this sentence p48]

What I don’t like:

I want a Wiley/Dummy website where there is a video that corresponds to the book. This would be particularly helpful with ‘movement’ examples like when he describes how to translate and stretch a parabola. [however, he does provide websites to videos p299]

Some of the screenshots have really tiny font—even with my glasses [p319]

My opinion is that teachers new to Nspire:

1) just can’t imagine all that it can do, especially if they are competent on the TI-84. Dummies is a grand tour and showcases Nspire’s capabilities (like graphing a parabola over an imported jpeg image).

2) when they do realize its potential, they may be temporarily overwhelmed. The book allows the reader to target specific topics (like Press-to-Test, Libraries) at your own pace.

The book provides instant and easy access to every Nspire feature. So, I strongly advise they get Dummies and take the plunge! They won’t regret it.

The two previous Cliffs Notes published by Wiley were much slimmer volumes. Dummies is nearly 400 pages, but with lots of margin space. There are color plates in the center.