During these 20 years, researchers visited classrooms and fine-tuned the curriculum. And a recent project at a high school in Wisconsin shows that they do. Technology changes focus Technology is changing the face of mathematics instruction, Romberg points out. It's no longer necessary or useful to devote large portions of instructional time to having students perform routine computations by hand. Calculators and computers allow students to spend more time setting up the problem and the relationships, and less time doing rote calculations.
Students can talk about what the ideas are, rather than spending so much time doing the routines.
Doing away with repetitive drills means that classrooms can become places where kids explore interesting problems using important mathematical ideas. Students learn effectively as they record measurements of real objects, describe properties using statistics, and explore the properties of a function by examining its graph. In a geometry unit, a teacher engages the students in sighting and projecting, locating and orienting, reasoning spatially, drawing and constructing, measuring and calculating. Such exercises, over time, enable students to depend less on the teacher to tell them whether they are right or wrong. The students find opportunities to develop confidence in using mathematics.