London-based company MicroLINK released the app on Wednesday and it's already received 2 million downloads in the first 24 hours. The program could make it easier for students to cheat on their homework, but the company said it's designed to be a learning tool. Some teachers said they're not concerned and will focus on basing their problems on real world situations that the app could not solve.
A new phone app that solves math problems by taking a picture could make it so easy for students to cheat some teachers say it may require a major change in classroom assignments.
But the creators of the PhotoMath app, which solves math problems and shows all of the work after a picture is taken of the problem on a smartphone, insist it is designed as an educational tool.
"We need to think deeply about how we can create an environment of learning both in and outside the classroom, because the technology is making outside the classroom a moot point unless we make some changes long term," Reno, Nev. high school math teacher Glenn Waddell Jr. wrote in an email to his school's department, according to a blog written by Dan Meyer, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University in the field of math education.
The application is shown to work seamlessly in an online demonstration.
The phone is held over a math book and snaps a picture of a problem. The app then solves it and underlines step by step how it arrived at the answer.
But could that level of sophistication make math too easy for students who would use it to do their homework?
Meyer told the Daily News, he is in touch with thousands of math educators online and none has expressed concern over the app. However he said he does hope the product is successful because it would mean a lot of changes to the current methods teachers use.
Changes the Mountain View, Calif. resident said may not be a bad thing.
"If it could do everything it promised, it'd ideally mean teachers would assign fewer dull exercises and the more interesting problems that PhotoMath can't solve - real-world problems, questions that require arguments, estimation questions, graphing questions, etc.," he said in an email.
But the 32-year-old said initially he and his fellow teachers have discovered the app doesn't work with a lot of reliability and had problems reading some problems. Some of the correct answers came to the solution in "unintuitive ways," he said.
"If it worked perfectly it'd absolutely change the kinds of math problems I'd assign - fewer of the kind PhotoMath could do automatically, more of the kind that require student thought," he said. "We're really far away from that, though."
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