Teachers find their way with TI-Navigator: pilot sites confirm TI's new wireless system for classrooms delivers real-time feedback that teachers can use to great advantage. Plus, students love it. (Special Advertising Section).

When was the last time you heard a middle school student be enthusiastic about algebra? Or a bunch of high school students who look forward to pre-calculus? Any math teacher would give her eyeteeth for a magic pill that would get those reluctant math students to sit up and beg for more. Well, move over laptops, Texas Instruments has a handle on the next big revolution in techno-class-room systems: it's handheld, wireless, interactive, inexpensive, and, if you're 14, it makes going to math class totally cool.

The TI-Navigator Classroom Learning System takes advantage of two separate ideas already in place in many schools: handheld calculators and the Internet. The system uses TI-83 Plus calculators, already a top seller in high schools, which feature an LCD screen for graphing and display functions and an alphanumeric keypad. The teacher, with an Internet-linked terminal on her desk and wireless "hubs" on each set of students' desk, can beam information onto each calculator. The beaming technology isn't new--other handheld devices have taken advantage of this kind of information sharing--but the important thing the TI-Navigator does is to take the information back from the students' responses and collate it for the teacher's use, instantly.

Moreover, the system lets teachers completely control the communications among their classrooms' handhelds. They may allow all students to share, only selected groups to communicate with each other, or turn off beaming capability, depending on the context. This opens all kinds of intriguing doors for educators.

Anonymity Just One Key

In order to get the systems into schools and the interface running smoothly, Texas Instruments has instituted a pilot program in middle and high schools nationwide. The Kiski (High) School, a 240-student boarding school in Saltsburg, Penn., is a pilot site starting its second semester with TI-Navigator.

Jill Gough, laptop program coordinator, AP math teacher and technology coach for the faculty, joined TI's pilot despite that laptop computers were already available to her students. The laptops, she said, were expensive, prone to crashing and breaking, and expensive to replace.

Gough further realized the TI-Navigator system would allow her to easily control what data the kids received as well as who received it, and that she could collect data back from students to immediately evaluate it. So she began the pilot program in early 2001 with a two-day, personalized training session at Kiski.

For Gough, the way the system handles the anonymity of test-takers has been key. At a boarding school, and with classes of approximately 10 students, the kids get to know one another well, she explains, and there may be a tendency toward finger-pointing when one student displays a failure to understand a math concept. With TI-Navigator, test-taking becomes non-threatening because students know their answers will be presented anonymously. Gough then has her students work in groups to tutor one another until everyone is up to speed. All this promotes student understanding in a subtle and powerful way.

Gough also sees TI-Navigator as a time-saver in class. Data is collected, distributed, and re-collected quickly and efficiently. If students each had to retrieve the same information for themselves--as they would if they each had a laptop with an Internet connection--data collection would take longer and leave less time for actual teaching. Though the kids think the handhelds are "so cool," Gough insists that pencil and paper are still valuable tools and so uses TI-Navigator, on average, about half of her classroom time.

Texas Instruments provided one classroom set for the pilot program, but Gough is writing grant proposals to get two more TI-Navigator systems installed in other Kiski classrooms in the coming school year.

Long Island High School Uses Every Day

When MacArthur High School, in Levittown, N.Y., was approached about joining the TI-Navigator pilot, they jumped at the opportunity. "We're always looking for ways to help our students achieve," notes Andrew Lippai, teacher and math chair at the Long Island campus.

MacArthur received a TI-Navigator system in January 2001, which math teacher Ann Davidian now uses daily in all of her classes, including calculus and pre-calculus. Very often, she distributes a quick quiz via the system to check students' comprehension. "When you ask them if they understand, they always say `yes, yes,'" explains Davidian, "but in their responses, four or five will get it wrong. With TI-Navigator, I can show all the responses anonymously, and the kids will teach each other, explaining which are the correct answers and why."

"It doesn't leave out the shy students," adds Lippai, so teachers can get a real handle on how well each student understands. Moreover, TI-Navigator helps reinforce learning in ways just not possible before the system was introduced. "It's so versatile," he says. "Teachers can use the immediate responses to make adjustments during class, as well as learn things to improve their long-term strategies."

Students appreciate TI-Navigator for their own reasons, notes Davidian. The way responses are displayed (i.e., how many picked A, B or C; anonymously) allows students to "know where they fit in with other people, their friends and classmates," which is very important to them, she observes. Students also like the instant feed back on their answers.

Teachers can tell a lot from the raw responses gathered by TI-Navigator. "If it's all over the map, [students] don't have a clue," explains Davidian. "But if they mostly picked the right answer, then I know they've got it."

This ability to supply immediate feedback is valuable in all disciplines, but critical to mathematics, which is a continuum. As Davidian summarizes," in a math class, if you lose something in the beginning, you're in trouble."

Lippai and Davidian work as a team integrating TI-83 Plus graphing calculators and TI-Navigator into MacArthur High's curricula, but students also helped. In fact, most of the TI-83 Plus applications these math teachers employ were written by MacArthur students--Tom Lutz, Michael Nilson, Jim D'Iorio and Tim Zegers--and then further fine tuned through actual classroom use.

Middle School Pilot Has Kids Asking for More

Judy Wheeler, the mathematics outreach consultant for the Berrien County Mathematics and Science Center in Michigan and an instructor for [T.sup.3] (Texas Instruments' professional development program, Teachers Teaching with Technology), saw an early demonstration of the system and knew she wanted to test it.

TI-Navigator offers both anonymous multiple-choice testing and participatory simulations. The simulations are programs that allow the students to input data from their handhelds and work together to solve various problems. This kind of colorful visual problem solving is, in Wheeler's opinion, where the biggest potential for the system lies. She approached a few math teachers in her district to see who would be interested in piloting the program and got an immediate and enthusiastic response.

Jane Damaske, a math teacher at Lakeshore Middle School, was excited by the idea of the TI-Navigator. For Damaske, the two biggest pluses to the system are the immediacy of the feedback and the anonymity it provides. By giving a short multiple-choice quiz and getting the answers back almost instantaneously, Damaske can check whether her students have been paying attention. Using the TI-Navigator, she can reveal quiz results without singling out any students who may have gotten wrong answers.

The system can be programmed to display results that show only how many students chose each different answer, not which student chose what. The teacher has that information, but students do not.

Last semester, the system was in use approximately half the time. This year, Damaske plans to incorporate it nearly every day, but not necessarily for the entire class period. She says that with one quick TI-Navigator-assisted quiz at the end of class, she can immediately assess whether the students have grasped whatever concept she has been teaching. Before, she would have had to wait to see that night's homework to tell whether the kids needed review, which kids were unclear on the concepts, and which kids were following her lead in class.

One reason TI-Navigator works well for her is that the kids love using it. Teachers, says Damaske, are dealing with a generation of kids who are accustomed to technology. It must sometimes seem to these kids that the only place they don't use technology is in school. If you give them something they're comfortable using--like a handheld, a computer, or the Internet--then they're already a step closer to being able to learn. Damaske reports that her kids love using the TI-Navigator and are disappointed when the TI handhelds sit idle throughout class. Using them has prompted enthusiasm for the subject of math, says Damaske. "We were factoring polynomials one day, and when class was over, the kids kind of groaned and asked if they could do some more. That's thrilling, to hear that."

TI-Navigator System in a Nutshell 

Texas Instruments is excited, too, at the way the TI-Navigator's pilot run is going. All the pilot sites report pleased users and initial successes.

For each pilot site, the firm provides as many as 40 TI-83 Plus graphing calculators, the "dumb" Internet gateway that talks to the TI server in Dallas, eight wireless hubs (one hub serves four students' handhelds), and two charging bays (one charging bay charges four hubs). The wireless hubs need to be charged overnight every couple of days, or can be plugged in with the included AC adapters.

Authoring tools by which pilot site testers can write their own programs and quizzes, are stored on the TI server, available any time. Teachers can also access an extensive library of pre-made activities and lesson plans from TI's Web site.

Customer support continues to be a priority. As with all TI educational products, there is a dedicated 800 number for educators to call with questions and problems, and online discussion groups allow all the users (teachers, administrators and support personnel involved in the TI-Navigator project) to share with other pilot site testers. Programs and quizzes written and shared by one teacher may be used by any other pilot site. The discussion board thus has become a virtual community where users may share their successes in the classroom, find help and advice and air their frustrations with any glitches in the system.

For now, TI-Navigator training consists of a TI representative visiting the school, but in the future, the training program will be available online and at [T.sup.3] Institutes.

Benefits Cross Disciplines

One unexpected benefit to the TI-Navigator pilots has been the kids' growing enthusiasm for math. At Kiski School, Gough reports that the technology has prompted students to think about the ways in which the answer was reached, not just the answer itself. Her students are looking for the theory behind the solution, which is both good problem-solving and a valuable life skill. The kids "want to see the path that was taken" where before they might have been more likely to need "being forced down the path," she observes.

TI-Navigator is as near to "kid-proof" as a classroom system can be. Unlike the laptops in use at the school, the TI calculators are built to take abuse. They survive being slung around in the students' backpacks, dropped and sat upon.

According to both piloting teachers,TI has been very responsive to suggestions for improvements to the TI-Navigator system.

Texas Instruments plans to release its TI-Navigator system in 2002. Once it has a foot in the door of the math and science department, teachers may well find TI handhelds in the English department, the language lab and the history classes. The only limits are the imaginations of the teachers who take this technology and run with it.

Math teacher Ann Davidian teaches a class at MacArthur High School in Levittown, N.Y., using the TI-Navigator System from Texas Instruments.