Technology in the IMP classroom.

The IMP curriculum

The Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP) has developed a new, problem-based, four-year high school curriculum that integrates traditional topics from high school algebra, geometry, and trigonometry with topics from other areas such as statistics and discrete mathematics. Each curriculum unit is organized around a rich central problem or theme, with units lasting from five to eight weeks. Over the course of a unit, students develop new concepts and skills and combine them with prior knowledge in order to solve the central problem.

The advent of electronic technology has changed the way in which much of mathematics is done today, and this change has allowed teachers and curriculum designers to focus more on mathematical ideas and devote less classroom time to mastery of mechanical and computational skills. Graphing calculators play an important role in the IMP curriculum, and IMP students have them within arm's reach during class at all times. Calculators are used both to reduce time spent on routine calculations and to enrich students' understanding of deep ideas.

IMP made a decision at the start of its curriculum development process that we wanted to rely only on technology which could be made readily available to students in most existing classrooms. We found that, even in schools where computer labs existed, it was often inconvenient and cumbersome for students to use computers on a regular basis, and so we have made the graphing calculator our primary technological tool.

Resek - 2 OCT 1996



There is a PDF file available for this paper.


Gómez, P. & Waits, B. (Eds.) (1996). Roles of calculators in the classroom.

Mail comments to Pedro Gómez: pgomez@uniandes.edu.co