Toys for boys?

The teaching and learning of mathematics are increasingly dependent on technology. Computer programs have become an integral part of mathematics education at all levels but most especially at the tertiary and pretertiary levels. Graphing packages are widely used at the secondary level, as are those that investigate the foundations of calculus, such as A Graphic Approach to the Calculus (Tall, Blokland, and Kok 1985). At the tertiary level, computer algebra systems such as Mathematica and Maple have become essential tools for university mathematics, and statistics packages such as Minitab and SPSS are a sine qua non for data analysis and display. The Internet and e-mail are widely used for finding information and for communicating with fellow students and teachers. Mathematics education is very different technologically from what it was even 10 years ago.