TI Interactive - TIE Session #2

This session was about TI Interactive - Windows only software that can be used as a math presentation and publishing program. I've looked at TI Interactive before but was hoping this sessions would give me a lot more information about it. It did not give me a whole lot more knowledge about the product, other than giving me time to play with it, but it did confirm some conclusions I had reached earlier.

• Texas Instruments does appear to not be developing it anymore (current version is from July 2004)
• There is still not a good site license price for it (they have a 30-seat site license for $600 or so, but I want a true site license).
• Because it's so old (in technology time), it's starting to show it's age in terms of interface and connectivity.

Despite the above, I still really like it and wish they (or somebody else) was continuing to develop it. It basically gives you most (if not all) of what a graphing calculator does, plus some, and allows you to create documents that can be manipulated, printed, or saved as images and used elsewhere (in Word, on a website, etc.). It's the only software of its type that I've found that is user friendly. I've looked at Mathview and Mathematica and things like that, but they are too high-end and the learning curve is just too steep. TI Interactive does much of what I'd like it to do in a fashion that teachers and students could use it.

I'm going to wait to see more about the software that's coming with the new math curriculum this fall to see if it has anything comparable. If not, I'll try contacting TI to see if they will sell me a site license at some kind of reasonable cost.

Tags:

• tie06
• software
• mathematics