Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education provide a new learning environment where the student builds his own knowledge, allowing his visualization and experimentation. This study evaluated the Geogebra software in the learning process of Calculus. It was observed that the proposed activities helped in the graphical interpretation of the covered content.
With the advance of information and communications technologies, new teaching tools are becoming more pervasive. These tools can be utilized in a variety of ways to improve and enhance math teaching. Considering the integration of technology in teaching mathematics, it is clear that the replacement of board and chalk with digital presentation material does not cover all the aspects of the mathematic subjects. One of the important prerequisites for quality of integration technology into mathematics teaching is the teacher's personality, i.e. knowledge, willingness and desire to improve his/her lessons bringing mathematics closer to the present generations of pupils.
GeoGebra as a dynamic mathematics software allows users to explore multiple representations of mathematics concepts. The paper deals with the problem of deployment of GeoGebra in Lithuanian's primary math education and the main purpose of this study is to investigate reasons/factors affecting teachers' decision to utilize GeoGebra and learning objects prepared by it in their teaching process. With a view to evaluate GeoGebra's suitability to primary education an expert opinion poll was conducted and results of that exploratory study are presented.
How do we teach children to express and communicate ideas in a formal and informal mode? What type of language do they need in a concrete context? How should they determine a proper level of formalization of their descriptions? In an attempt to explore these issues we carried out a pilot experiment in the frames of the DALEST European project whose goal was to create environment for stimulating the 3D geometry understanding of young students and to assist them in developing some fundamental mathematical skills including spatial visualization and articulating ideas. The pilot experiment was carried out with 5th graders from five Bulgarian schools by means of specially designed educational scenarios and the Cubix Editor (a Logo based application for manipulating unit-sized cubes). The children were given tasks to describe compositions of unit-sized cubes and to build such compositions by means of the Cubix Editor when given their descriptions by peers. The students experienced the whole process of generating a good description - becoming aware of the ambiguity, producing counterexamples, reducing the ambiguity, eliminating the redundancy.
The pilot experiment aimed at specifying the structure, scope and methods behind the stereometry activities envisaged for 5th graders in the frames of the DALEST project.
The first impressions confirm our belief that the language is playing significant role in the learning experiences of the students, that the relationship between thoughts and words involves back and forth reshaping process. While constructing and describing cubical structures they articulated their own ideas, developed concepts collaboratively with others, moved between everyday and mathematical terms, between procedural and declarative style, exploring the boundaries of understanding. Such interplay with the step-wise refinement of their descriptions of cubical structures would hopefully enhance students' skills for working with mathematical definitions, on one hand, and prepare them for writing, debugging and explaining programs, on the other.
The main task of this follow-up study was to describe teachers' expectations, experiences and possible changes in the pedagogical use of ICT. As a part of an ICT development project, three sets of data were gathered from a region in Eastern Finland, by means of questionnaire. A total of 156 teachers of primary and early secondary education returned the questionnaire in 1999, 155 teachers in 2001, and 81 in 2004. The results indicate that teachers have increased their use of various ICT applications (especially data processors, web-browsers, e-mails, and CD-ROMs) both in their private lives and in pedagogical practice. Based on their own self-assessment, the teachers' ICT abilities have improved during the project period. Co-operative activities by means of ICT also increased between colleagues. Although teachers saw ICT as helpful for pupils' learning, some sceptical attitudes emerged as well.