TI-Nspire CAS Teacher Edition Software

Today I finally received the 1.4 Edition of this software. Last spring I responded to an email I would get a free upgrade – I had purchased the previous version – and it finally came! It would have been nice if it had shown up a little earlier, but it’s not too bad. I installed it and started to play around with it a bit. For the most part it seems similar to before. However there are some cool new things. This is not an exhaustive comparison, but the first thing I liked was the emulator software. On the previous version you could pop up the keypad next to the screen, but not the whole calculator. Now there are two versions of the emulator. The first is a straight up emulator in that it just shows the calculator as is. See?

The second version puts the calculator, as above, on one side of the screen, but then puts an expanded version of the main calculator screen on the other side, like so:

This is one think I liked about the TI-Smartview software, so I am glad they brought it back for the Nspire. Of course, now that I am thinking about it, the new software is specifically label the “Teacher Edition.” Perhaps that is why. There are a couple of changes in the menu bar in the ‘Normal’ mode as well. Now there is a screen capture button which will capture whatever you have in the calculator screen as well as a button whereby you can send files to your class if they are connected with TI-Navigator.

Although I will not be presenting a lot of material in my calculus class (where my students will all have one of these) I do envision having mini-lessons on how to use the calculator for various things, and this software will be great.

By the way, I did notice that if you do not uninstall the previous version, installing the new version does not automatically overwrite it. I now have both versions on my computer.