This is in response to the lack of support by TI of the programming community:

If I may present a solution to an issue that was presented at the beginning of the topic...

TI caters not only to the programming community, but to the teachers. First off, TI should realize that they get a great deal of business from the programming community, from needing new calculators after bricking our own, to just wanting to try out new hardware. They should take that into account when fighting against us with their downgrade protections and PTT features.

But, that is not my point. My point is this...teachers give TI alot of business as well. Many teachers are repulsed by programming abilities, and even discourage it to a point. My math teachers used to do RAM clears and delete our groups all the time and the only way I got around this was to group everything, then use CalcSys to toggle the inGroup value, which hides all groups and programs. Teachers believe that programming allows students to cheat. My question is, does programming our calculator before hand, on our own merit, count as cheating? In my chemistry class, I often made utilities that made chemistry calculations easier. After being initially skeptical of the calculator's ability, my chem teacher became impressed by the software I was making and began distributing the programs to the class online and allowed them to be utilized on tests.

We need to convince teachers that programming is not detrimental, but it can be a great help to in class-activity. The important thing is that my programs in chemistry explained why the calculator was doing what it was doing, not just giving an answer. If we tailor some software toward constructive use in class, teachers will begin to see the value and may clamor for additional programming functionality themselves.


So, we need to dedicate some of our projects to helping classes, and teachers. I am all too ready to launch this effort, if it helps the general community. Who is with me? I will add a teachers section to my own website. I respectfully suggest to the site moderators here that a teacher section be added to the forums and download section.

Programming helped me in math, the kid next to me who write down his notes on his calc is the one who cheats....

I am totally agreeing with this

Cool story, bro. If it doesn't come from TI, they won't care.

Sadly, this is true. the teachers are too programmed to think we are usefull

nuff said

We need to prove to them that we are useful.

I'll go get some of my magic fairy dust to help facilitate that.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that Nikky is exactly right. We are the most miniscule drop in the bucket to TI's education division, and a corporate division that's been around for two decades, gradually pulling away from having anything to do with the community (especially after the ticalc.org CD fiasco) is very unlikely to change course at this point. It would be more trouble for them, they would see basically no revenue because of it, and I don't think they would try to see the point.

Yeah, there lies the problem, we can't. TI holds conventions for teachers that use their produccts and talk shit about us...


true story, one of my teachers attends and told me they do that `-`

lol. Well, I am going to do as much as I can, using my website. If there is anyone who wants to help me out with facilitating this on my own site, email me at acagliano.blast@gmail.com

i wuld be glad to help though, despite the fact it only has a .000001 chance of working... stupid TI

Don't get me wrong, feel free to involve the Cemetechians here in any way that would be helpful, since more educational programs and awareness would help us regardless of what TI does; I just don't see them being particularly involved.

I agree with you, Kerm. I just wanted to give the cause as much attention as possible. If you have any problem with it at all, feel free to remove it.

heheh, turns out that the calc teacher at my school would actually vouch for this she knows quite some stuff about calcs (I think some asm O_O) and their history... such as the highly unstable first release of MOS which apparently made TI mad....

good to know this, I thought she was just another TI worshipper. perhaps I should direct her to this site/thread

You definitely should do so, Qazz; I would be very interested in the point of view of an educator.

Yep, she was telling me some things that go on at TI that I highly doubt some of the senior members know O_O

Honestly, I don't think teachers will ever appreciate the value of calculator programming.

I don't think so either, unfortunately. I'm sure there are exceptions galore, to varying extents, but for the most part I'd say they won't appreciate them. Qazz, you should share; Cemetech hasn't had a scoop for quite some time.

Well, my goal here is to do an experiment. My key argument is that the usage of programs on a test, or in class in general, does not profoundly affect the grade in the class. I would like some students, preferably in high school, but college works too, to take test, some using COMPUTATIONAL software (NOT CHEAT NOTES), and others not using it. I would like to enter the results and see if my theory is correct. If so, it will become the chief argument in a letter I plan to distribute to teachers.

If anyone or anyone you know is willing to take part, great. The only data I need is: Was software used? Grade on exam? and How long it took to finish test?

Remember, I do need a control group of students who do not use any software.

Will do, on monday I shall show her cemetech and omnimaga when getting AND installing ndless for her

This is a draft of my letter that I will distribute to teachers. Let me know what you guys think:



To the teachers,


It is important for everyone to be brought up to speed on the present situation. The TI-calculator community is composed up of three main groups. They are the teachers, the lay-users, and the programming community. Of those two, the ones that give Texas Instruments the most business are the teachers and the programmers. By encouraging your students to get calculators from Texas Instruments, instead of from its competitor, Casio, you drive sales for TI up enormously. The programming community is the next leading group in terms of business for TI. Whether it be because we have destroyed the programming of our calculator beyond repair, or because we just want to try out new hardware, we also purchase a lot from TI.

I am unaware where the stigma of programming being a hinderance comes from, but it seems to be present in all teachers of the appropriate fields; that programming one's calculator is, not only a waste of time, but also a keen way to cheat on exams. I will grant that many students do not care at all about the merits of calculator programming and use programs to store cheats, but to embrace just this one group of students as the reason "spoils the bunch", so to speak. There are many of us out there who use programming not to cheat, but rather to hone in on one's own skills and to grasp a higher understanding of the topics presented.

First off, let me define a program. A program is a series of instructions given to a computational device that cause it to carry out certain tasks. The nature of a program, when constructed as such, is not to cheat. I have always been taught that the best test of whether or not you understand the material is to see if you can do it yourself. But, what better indication is there that you know the material so well than that you can give a calculator fool-proof instructions on how to carry out a given calculation, have it explain why that calculation was made, and account for margins of error.

If that is not convincing enough, allow me to present this. I myself will admit to having used pre-made programs on tests in the past. Not for reference on information, but merely for computational assistance…the ability to perform multiple calculations at once. On average, I performed the same, if not worse, on the exam, leading me to the conclusion that regardless of what you bring into the test, not even a program can help you if you do not know the material. All the program does is help you answer the question faster, if you already know what to do. I currently have a case study of this underway, in a larger scale, and will present my findings to the community. If you are interested in the result, create an account on my website, http://www.c2prgm.webs.com. That will allow you to view the "Teacher's Section", where the results, and software made for teachers will be placed.

Then, there is the issue of gaming. One of the chief arguments against playing games on calculators that I have heard is that they mess around with the lists (L1 through L6), which are used by the calculator to graph regressions, as well as other system variables. The truth: Very few calculator games actually interfere with important data used in class. In fact, 95% of the games I have reviewed create their own storage locations, and then destroy them once they are no longer needed. This takes away strength from the most powerful downside to games: students play games during class. Well, outlawing games on calculators does not solve the problem, as students will just find other ways to not pay attention. The fact is that you need to trust your students to have the maturity to say "there is a time and a place for everything, and class is not the time for playing games".

I have heard that Texas Instruments holds conventions for teachers, and at these conventions they speak about the programming community. Judging by the industry's treatment of our support requests, it I can assume that their statements about us are negative. Well, here is the truth about TI. TI releases new software that is (1) buggy (means prone to crashes and other errors; in fact the TI-84+ OS 2.55MP is known to have crashed while calculating 1+1.), (2) designed to cause incompatibility with our programs, such as xLib, Omnicalc, and others, and (3) contains no new features. Many members of our community have contacted TI about why they design these new, pointless features, while their older ones still still don't work properly. We have gotten the run-around, links to the documentations that do not address our questions, or just completely ignored. All the while, they claim to support educational advancement.

As if that isn't bad enough, TI has posted takedown orders against several more prominent members of our community, who have reverse-engineered key parts of TI's operating system software. We have used this information to port our own OS software and run it on our own calculators; we have not used this information to edit or redistribute TI's software and claim it as our own. Instead, we use it to fix the mistakes that TI refuses to. Yet that did not stop TI from attacking our members for copyright infringement. To my knowledge, at least one of these cases went to court, and a judge threw out the case. Yet, TI tells you, the teachers of the world, that we have warped priorities. Well, we aren't the ones who spend money filing cases against innocent software developers, instead of producing better equipment.


Signed proudly,

Anthony Cagliano
-TI calculator software designer
-member of omnimaga.org and cemetech.net