Published by KermMartian 9 years, 1 month ago (2015-03-14T17:11:55+00:00) | Discuss this article

We've enjoyed a day and a half of TI Education's T^3 2015 conference in Fort Worth, TX, and as we head into a sunny, warm afternoon of sessions, I wanted to briefly update you on what we've been exploring and experiencing at the conference. We also want to wish you a very happy Pi Day. Some are calling this an "ultimate" Pi Day, as the year 2015 gives us the (US-formatted) date 3/14/15. At 9:26:53am, TI hosted a celebration with pie and coffee, well-attended by the conference attendees. What are you doing to celebrate this Pi day? We hope that your celebrations involve pi recitations and certainly some delicious pie.

Some updates from T^3 2015:

• As announced during yesterday's opening session, TI's popular STEM Behind Hollywood initiative (of which we have made complete TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition ports will now be joined by STEM Behind Health. These new Lua activities will show how math, science, and engineering are involved in health and healthcare. The first activity released is Type 1 Diabetes: Managing a Critical Ratio, which challenges students using the TI-Nspire CX to explore ratios and proportionality, biological control mechanisms, and more.
• We are excited to continue promoting graphing calculator programming as a perfect way to get students involved in STEM. I've enjoyed talking to a number of teachers this year that have integrated TI-BASIC programming into their math and science curricula or are considering doing so, and we'll likely have some exciting news to share around graphing calculator programming in schools in the near future. I also attended an excellent talk by the enthusiastic John Isaacs, a constant proponent of my programming book, on introductory TI-BASIC programming.
• I spoke this morning about graphing calculator programming in the classroom, primarily to math and science teachers. You can download my T^3 2015 presentation, and if you're interested in buying Programming the TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus or Using the TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus today, you can get 41% off both books with code "ctwt3ic".
• At the T^3 2015 reception last night, there was much Texas line-dancing in celebration both of our host state and Texas Instruments' heritage. Math and science educators and engineers are enthusiastic and skilled at line dancing, it turns out! There were also delicious hors d'oeuvres and costumed photography fun.
• At long last, DrDnar and I both had the opportunity to try out the TI-84 Plus CE in a session taught by John LaMaster. We're not posting official impressions yet, as we haven't had enough time to fairly evaluate the device, but it looks like the screen speed in particular has been greatly improved by 2.6x or more thanks to the new memory-mapped LCD and ez80 processor, while math operations are roughly 15-20% faster. We also got to see some of the features of the new TI Connect CE and TI-SmartView in action.
• Finally, we have had the pleasant opportunity to talk to a lot of TI engineers and staff here at the conference, and it's great to see the people who make TI's calculators possible interacting with their target audience.

Once again, happy Pi day, and we can't wait to bring you news on the rest of the conference tomorrow!

Left to right: Yours truly with the TI-84+CE; running an ez80 ASM program on the TI-84+CE; exploring TI-BASIC with John Isaacs; Texas line-dancing; a Texas sunrise; Pi Day pie from TI. Bonus points for finding the zombie from Zombie Apocalypse Parts 1 and 2 in the photos.


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