Exploring the Place of Hand-Held Technology in Secondary Mathematics Education *

While sophisticated technology for mathematics is available and used in many educational settings, there are still many secondary school mathematics classrooms in many countries in which student access to such facilities is either very limited or non-existent, either at home or at school. This paper focuses on secondary mathematics education for students and teachers who are without reliable and regular access to computers or to the Internet. The place of hand-held technologies, including scientific calculators, graphics calculators and integrated devices will be considered. The computational support such devices offer to students is described and evaluated. Opportunities for new approaches to teaching and learning mathematics are described. The significance of hand-held technologies for aspects of the mathematics curriculum, its evolution and its assessment will be outlined and some issues associated with effective integration of technology into the secondary school curriculum are identified. 1