Texas Instruments TI-Nspire CX User manual

© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 1

FirstSteps
with

Technologyforteachingand
learningmathematics

SevenIntroductoryTutorialsforthe
Handheld
™
© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 1


Start by spending a few seconds looking at the layout of the keypad.
™
© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 5

™

Page 6 © 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology


This rst tutorial introduces some of the key features of TI-Nspire™ learning technology, in parcular the
structure of TI-Nspire documents, with dierent applicaons operang on dierent pages. The various menus
are introduced, as well as creang and navigang around documents. The tutorial assumes that you are using
the TI-Nspire handheld device and the tutorial begins by drawing a comparison between this and other types
of technology.

Pick up the TI-Nspire handheld device and, if you are used to using a calculator, parcularly
a Texas Instruments TI-83 or TI-84 graphics calculator, you are likely to feel a certain reassuring familiarity:
there’s a screen and a keyboard laid out in a fairly familiar way. As with many calculators the  switch is in
the top right corner. So press c to switch on.

See Geng Started with the TI-Nspire Handheld, Recharging the Handheld
Please don’t worry about what’s on the screen for the moment, but think about how to switch it o. The c
key has “o” wrien in light blue above it so that’s the one to use aer pressing the blue key marked /.
But just a minute, it was a key marked  that you used on the calculators, and the change to the use of a 
key is quite signicant. The designers at TI have moved to making this device much more like a computer and
it has a ctrl key, /, and also a shi key g. Many of the main keys on the handheld have second funcons
wrien in blue above the key and these are acvated using the ctrl key. Noce for example q, p and h. The
ctrl key can be used in conjuncon with the alphabec keys to create keyboard shortcuts just as you are used to
doing on a computer. For example, you can copy and paste using /C and /V. There’s also that most useful
keyboard shortcut for undoing a previous acon, /Z, which can also be acvated by pressing /d(ª).
(See Geng Started guide, Using Keyboard Shortcuts for a full list).

Just like a computer, documents can be stored on the TI-Nspire CX handheld – The TI-Nspire™ CX handheld
comes equipped with 192 MB of memory Of the total memory, 128 MB is dedicated to document storage. As
documents are created and stored they take up space on the handheld’s memory so you may nd that every
now and again you need to free space on memory aer long-term use. If there isn’t enough memory on the
handheld, you can do one of the following:
• Back up documents and folders to a computer or another TI-Nspire CX
• Delete documents and folders you no longer use
• Reset the memory, which deletes all les and folders on the handheld

™
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© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 7

The TI-Nspire™ CX handheld comes with a rechargeable baery, which should be charged for at least six hours
before rst use. The built-in rechargeable baery does not need to be removed from the handheld in order to
recharge it. The handheld will sll work and can be used while it is charging.
With use of 2 hours per day at the default brightness level the baery should last for up to 10 days.
The handheld comes with the following cables:
• Standard mini-A to mini-B USB cable for transferring les between handhelds
• Standard A to mini-B USB cable for transferring les to and from a computer and for charging the baery via
the USB port

To charge the baery in the TI-Nspire™CX handheld:
• Connect the handheld to a computer using a standard A to mini-B USB cable. If the driver is not found when
the handheld is connected to the computer download the soware that includes a driver from
.
OR
• Connect to a wall outlet using a TI wall adapter (sold separately).
OR
• Place the handheld or mulple handhelds in a TI-Nspire™ CX Docking Staon.

™

Page 8 © 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology

When you switched on a calculator you expected to see
what was called the  and you’d be able to
start carrying out calculaons right away. But the TI-Nspire
handheld is dierent in this respect too. Press c, the
home buon, a black key at the top right of the keypad. You
should see a screen similar to this. Navigate to the various
icons on the Home Screen using the large square 
on the keypad. This behaves as both a touchpad (like using a
laptop), and as a navigaonal device as you can press on the
up, down, le and right arrows to move the selector around.
To click or select something you press the x square symbol in
the middle of the touchpad, or press the enter key. However
don’t select anything else yet!
Consider whether the TI-Nspire’s home screen is more reminiscent of a calculator or of a computer. When a
computer wakes up you rst see the desktop and in many ways this TI-Nspire Home Screen is similar. With a
computer you have to choose an applicaon to use -- a word-processor, spreadsheet or whatever. You then
must open a document within which you will be able to write text, do calculaons, manipulate images etc.
 Desktop  Choose Applicaon  Open Document
In many ways working with TI-Nspire is similar. You always have to work within a document and you can use
dierent applicaons to calculate, draw graphs, , work with geometry, manipulate lists and spreadsheets, work
with data and stascs, add notes and perform data logging.
The TI-Nspire applicaons are:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ™

™

© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 9
What is quite dierent from the computer is that within one document you can have mulple pages or
problems that can make use of the dierent applicaons. The spreadsheet on one page of a document can
interact seamlessly with calculaons done on a calculator page and graphs drawn on another. You can also
have more than one dierent representaon on one page.
This use of mulple representaons is one of the many things that make the TI-Nspire such a powerful tool.
So with TI-Nspire you rst open a document, or start a new one, and then choose an applicaon.
 Home screen  New document  Choose applicaon
 If you would like to return to the document you are working on without inserng
a new page, from the Home screen select opon .
You can do this by pressing 4 on the keypad.

™
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Page 10 © 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology

Because there are some occasions when you really just
want to carry out a quick calculaon or draw a quick graph
the TI-Nspire includes a feature called the .
The scratchpad is designed for those casual throw-away
calculaons that need to be done from me to me, but
are not worth keeping in a full document. To access the
Scratchpad press ».
This opens a calculator page for performing quick calculaons.
Pressing » again swaps between the calculator and a graph
scratchpad page. To close the Scratchpad simply press d.

In order to see what documents are pre-loaded on your
handheld you need to use opon 2 on the Home screen:
…
Either use the touchpad to move the selector down to
the … opon then press x to select it.
Or use the touchpad to move the cursor over opon 2 and
x Or just press 2 key to select opon the 2nd opon.
You should see a screen called the Document Browser and it
will be something like the one shown here. Documents are
organized into folders as they would be on a computer. A new
TI-Nspire handheld should have a folder called :
Tip: You can use either x or · as
alternave key presses
Move the cursor to the folder entled .
Then press x or · or ¢ on the touchpad to open the folder.
Inside the  Folder on your handheld you will
probably nd a document entled ’Geng Started 3_0’.
Use ¤ to locate and · to open the document.

™

© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 11
e is oen used to move to and
highlight dierent parts of the screen
Name of Document
Total number of pages in the problem
Number or Name of the Problem
If the handheld has been used previously you will see a dialog
box asking you if you want to save the document that is
currently open. Unless you want to save your previous work
press e or ¢ to move the highlight to No. To conrm this
choice press ·.

When the document opens you may see a screen similar
to the one shown on the le. For the moment, please do
not follow the instrucons on the screen just yet! Connue
working through this tutorial, which will introduce you to
many of the key features of the TI-Nspire document model.
Among these key features are useful and easy ways to
navigate through documents. For example, pressing / ¢ will
take you to the next page in a document. Similarly, pressing
/¡ returns you to the previous page. Pressing /£ will
take you to the Page Sorter which enables you to move
quickly and easily through the pages of a document.
Noce the informaon typically provided on the Page Sorter:
A TI-Nspire document can consist of mulple problems and each problem can consist of mulple pages.
For example, the document shown here consists of at least two problems, with 5 and 9 pages respecvely.

™

Page 12 © 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology
If the ‘Geng Started 3_0’ document is present on your handheld, work through it now as far
as page 2.5. This will allow you to revise what has been covered so far in this tutorial
Scroll downwards with the Touchpad and you will see all the problems in the document. If you move the
highlight onto Problem 2, say, and press ¡ the pages of that problem will close up. Pressing · or /¤ takes
you back to single page view on the page currently selected.
Each page of a document contains one (or more) of the TI-Nspire applicaons.
As a reminder, these are the same applicaons that can be accessed from the Home screen, i.e.:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ™
The use of each of the applicaons which you might want to
use for data logging is covered in the tutorials that follow. Any
page can be divided into as many as four work areas, allowing
up to four dierent applicaons to be used per page. To do this,
See ‘Spling the Screen’ in Tutorial 3, page 23.
Shown here is a page that has been split into two with the
 applicaon on the le, and the 
applicaon beside it.

™

© 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology Page 13

Return to the Home screen, and select … to access
the document browser. Noce that within the document
browser new folders may be created or folders renamed.
Items that are grey, rather than black in a menu cannot be
chosen in the current environment. For example, on the
screen on the le, opon … is unavailable.
To save a document under a new name press ~.
This opens a menu providing access to document management features. By pressing 1 and then 5 the
document can be saved under another lename.
Pressing d will always close
down a menu or dialog box.

™

Page 14 © 2012 Texas Instruments Educaon Technology
Then open a document in the browser and press b again. It
is important to realise that b will always provide access to
the features of the current environment. For example, within
the  applicaon, this menu oers only the available
opons for that applicaon (as shown to the right).
There are a number of tools that are available for managing
documents when you choose the use the  menu
by pressing the ~buon. Several opons are marked by
the symbol ¢ and pressing ¢ on the Touchpad opens their
submenus.
Within any applicaon, this  menu retains the same features but any opons that are currently
unavailable are greyed out.
The next tutorial describes creang a new document and using a rst TI-Nspire applicaon.

• Understanding, the terms document, problem, page, applicaon, and home screen
• Use of the / key and keyboard shortcuts
• The Home Screen
• Scratchpad
• Memory
• Baery Life
• The Document Browser to navigate around documents and folders
• The Page Sorter to navigate inside documents
• The use of e and d
• Why b produces dierent menus in dierent contexts
• The Document menu