Re: Does HP Advertise Their Calculators? Message #24 Posted by Don Shepherd on 28 Mar 2010, 10:05 a.m., in response to message #23 by David Hayden
Good points, David.
TI's presence in the education market is huge. They have a nation-wide network of support people who work with the schools and teachers to show how TI calculators can benefit teachers and students. And I'm sure they offer "deals" to school systems who buy their products. Walk into most middle or high school classrooms and you will see pouches hanging from the wall that hold 30 TI calculators. In middle school it is usually the TI-73 (or similar), and in high school the TI-83 plus. Regarding requiring students to buy calculators for math class, my experience is in middle schools and no middle school in which I have taught requires a student to buy a calculator; it may be different at the high school level, especially in advanced math classes.
Three years ago, when the TI-NSpire came out, TI sponsored 3-day training sessions around the country for educators to get familiar with the NSpire. I attended one in Hendersonville, Tennessee. I think it cost like $225 (which most school systems paid, but not mine!) but each attendee received a new NSpire (non CAS, but you could swap for a CAS unit later, which I did) plus an electronic screen that you could use to show the NSpire display on an overhead projector. I have rarely used that, or the NSpire, in class, but I do have about 4 or 5 TI-83's and 84's that I have used over the years with my students. This past year Texas Roadhouse donated 8 TI-83's to the school at which I currently teach.
So TI has a very large presence nationwide. And the textbook publishers have followed suit as well. I doubt that any textbook publisher would be interested in including HP calculator specific information in their textbooks since there aren't--and aren't likely to be--any HP calculators in the classrooms.
I imagine that when kids that have bought scientific or graphing calculators leave school, they pretty much leave the calculators behind. Bulky TI-83's aren't really necessary around the house, and their pockets are filled with i-devices!
|