It finally happened in my class. One of my students used an online calculator to factor trinomials with a leading coefficient of one. It was easy to tell she'd done it.First, she usually struggles with signs and tends to get them wrong so when she turned in the work in less than 30 minutes with only the answers and all the answers were correct, I knew she'd done something.
Rather than accuse her of anything, I gave her a quiz a couple days later. She failed it miserably so I made a comment in passing that I asked them to show work so I could see her thinking and determine where she still needed help and when she goes online to find answers, it means she doesn't get a chance to learn the process. She just grinned and did all the problems again but this time included the work and made the same errors she's made in the past when working with integers.
As you know there are more and more tools on the internet or as apps which either give the answer to problems or provide the steps. Some of the apps are beginning to include written information for each step. I used one of the apps to solve 2x + 1 = 8
If you look at the above screen, it shows the steps with writing explanations for each step. This makes it possible for students to write down each step with explanations but if the teacher requires complete sentences, students have to add sentences because most of use will not accept 1-1=0 as a complete sentences.
Still this is a step in the right direction as long as students actually read the steps, they can learn from this type of app. The one I used is called snap chat. It does read hand written equations so one can write it on a paper, snap, and voila but the app requires an internet connection to use. That is only a problem if you do not have internet or its not reliable.
Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear.
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