Vietnamese educators are concerned that the overuse of smart devices and software to solve math problems will cause students to become lazy.
A smartphone software solving math problems – photomath – has been popular among students. Students do not need to do operations or enter numerals into smartphones, but just need to put the calculations under the smartphone’s camera. Then, the answers will be visible on the smartphone.
Photomath is “miraculous”, some students have commented. A reporter, with the assistance of photomath, was able to solve math problems shown in the textbooks for fourth, eighth and 11th graders within one second.
When the reporter scanned 54637+28245 (math question No 3, page 4, math textbook for fourth grader, Education Publishing House) with his camera, the answer 82882 immediately turned up on his smartphone.
He also found that the software is “smarter” than he thought, because it could help solve more complicated operations. For example, the software can find the true value of X in the question: x-417=6384 (x=6801).
If someone wants to know how to solve the question, he can press “step” displayed on the smartphone, and then will see: x-417=6384, x= 6384+41.7.
In general, photomath is very “useful” for fourth and eighth graders because it can help solve most of the common questions. However, it cannot give solutions to trigonometry and derivative problems designed for 11th graders.
A math teacher at a high school in Hanoi said that he had failed to solve math questions on the previous years’ university entrance exams with the software.
The software is available for free downloading on the App Store or Windows Phone Store.
Dr. Chu Cam Tho from the Hanoi University of Education, after downloading the software to do four basic operations, warned that the software may do more harm than good.
Tho explained that the main target of math teaching is to provide knowledge to students, help them develop thinking, and use logic in life.
“Even if a student’s result is incorrect, that student would be more appreciated than others who give right answers but do not know how to deal with problems,” he said.
Bui Manh Tung, a math teacher at the Trung Vuong Secondary School in Hanoi, suggested prohibiting students from the first to seventh grades to use software in solving math problems because it may spoil their capabilities.
He said students in higher grades can use software but they can do this under supervision by teachers and parents.
“The biggest advantage of software is convenience. However, the convenience will make students lazier in thinking, and nullify their thinking abilities,” he said.
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