A socio-technological assemblage when teaching with apps

Using Mobile Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics

As our attention moves to the opportunities and constraints that mobile technologies (MT) might afford, app developers, teachers and researchers have become more adept at identifying and enacting opportunities for enhancing mathematical thinking. These opportunities emerge through the various environments, both hardware (i.e., tablets) and software (i.e., applications), and the mathematical activity that these facilitate. The features of MT, for instance the ability to use in-built video and audio tools, allows users to capture authentic data in their everyday world and use the data for modelling, or statistical inference. Processing this data in situ changes the nature of the learning experience. Likewise, the potential for visual, interactive engagement with some learning experiences, coupled with the haptic and oral/aural affordances of the technology, change the nature of the mathematical activity. By inference, this changes the nature of the mathematical thinking. Engaging with number sequences by creating sets of objects that represent numbers as you touch the screen, using an oral count, using concrete materials, or learning a sequence by rote, are all different representations of number that might evoke a variety of understandings and ways of thinking mathematically. Being able to elegantly connect these various representations, and move between them, appears to offer opportunities for deeper conceptual understanding of mathematics concepts. With MT being a relatively recent addition to the scope of digital technologies that might facilitate learning in mathematics, there is a need for research on the use

International Journal of Learning and Media, 2011

2012

One of the most significant influences on student engagement is the teacher’s pedagogical practices, including the incorporation of technology into the teaching and learning of mathematics. This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating how the incorporation of iPads into a Year 3 primary classroom during a six month trial influenced teaching and learning practices and student engagement with mathematics. All of the students appear to have had a positive experience during the trial and the classroom teacher believed their engagement with mathematics had improved as a result. Although there were challenges involved in integrating the iPads into mathematics lessons, some teaching practices were adapted to accommodate the technology. The integration of the iPads highlighted the need for teacher professional development and the importance of developing strong Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

ICME-13 Monographs, 2018

This paper reports on how the affordances of the app Math Shake reshaped the learning experience-an aspect of a research project examining the ways mobile technologies are used in primaryschool mathematics. Students used different digital tools within the app to solve word problems, while the affordances, including multi-representation, dynamic and haptic, made the learning experience different from when using pencil-and-paper technology. However, while the affordances of the MT are important, the teacher's pedagogical approach was central in the learning.

Mathematics Education Research Journal, 2015

This article reports on the main experiences gained from a 2-year study which incorporated A.L.E.X., an educational puzzle game available on iPad or Android tablet devices, within the primary school mathematics curriculum. The study took place in a public primary school, located in a rural area of Cyprus. The majority of its students come from low socioeconomic status families. Among the school community, a group of 15 pupils (eight boys and seven girls), aged 10-11 years old, was randomly selected to comprise the sample. The same group of students was visited twice within a period of 2 years, and a teaching intervention was organized. In both interventions, the application A.L.E.X. accompanied by a student worksheet constituted the main means of instruction. The worksheets were designed to integrate a technology with core mathematical ideas embedded in the national mathematics curriculum. Findings gained from the teaching intervention suggest that game apps hold a lot of promise as a tool for reforming mathematics education. While working with A.L.E.X., the children identified and processed mathematical themes that emerged spontaneously. They experienced unique emotions of surprise and enthusiasm regarding the existence of games with mathematical content that led them to acknowledge the pedagogical role that tablet devices could play. This helped them to broaden their fundamentally narrow viewpoint of mathematics as being primarily computation and arithmetic.

2008

Of the three theories of intellectual development that have had greatest influence on school classrooms since the turn of last century, behaviourist, constructivism and socio-culturalism, all were initially conceptualised before digital technologies were available. Further, whereas current reform agendas that emphasise the importance of social aspects of learning can draw theoretical underpinnings from socio-cultural or socio-constructivist perspectives of knowledge acquisition and meaning making, theoretical frameworks that help explain the role of collaborative interaction in technology rich classrooms are only beginning to emerge. This paper will consider the emergence of recent developments in theorising collaborative practice that incorporate the use of digital tools from a socially orientated theoretical perspective and attempt to draw connections with this emergence from the history of ICMI's involvement in this area.

Mathematics Education Research Journal, 2015

Several recent curriculum reforms aim to address the shortfalls traditionally associated with mathematics education through increased emphasis on higher-orderthinking and collaborative skills. Some stakeholders, such as the US National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the UK Joint Mathematical Council, advocate harnessing the affordances of digital technology in conjunction with social constructivist pedagogies, contextual scenarios, and/or approaches aligned with Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). However, it can be difficult to create technologymediated, collaborative and contextual activities within a conventional classroom setting. This paper explores how a combination of a transformative, mobile technology-mediated approach, RME, and a particular model of 21st century learning facilitates the development of mathematics learning activities with the potential to increase student engagement and confidence. An explanatory case study with multiple embedded units and a pre-experimental design was conducted with a total of 54 students in 3 schools over 25 hours of class time. Results from student interviews, along with pre-test/post-test analysis of questionnaires, suggest that the approach has the potential to increase student engagement with, and confidence in, mathematics. This paper expands on these results, proposing connections between aspects of the activity design and their impact on student attitudes and behaviours.

Implementing mobile learning in curriculum-based educational settings faces challenges related to perceived ethical and learning issues. This study investigated the affordances of mobile technologies to support mathematics instruction by teachers. An exploratory study employing questionnaires and semi-structured interviews revealed that, while mathematics instruction can be augmented with mobile learning, the majority of schools in Indonesia have banned student use of mobile phones in classrooms. Teachers are concerned about the improper use of mobile phones that could impact their students' mental well-being and distract them from learning. Most teachers perceive mobile technologies to be disruptive and seem reluctant to use them for teaching delivery. However, teachers are eager to experiment with digital technologies within mathematics instruction. Our findings suggest infusing alternate technologies that fit better with the school's teaching and learning environment. This includes web-based applications that can run on different digital devices ranging from desktop computers, laptops, and tablets, to mobile phones. We propose setting up communities of practice for mathematics teachers to share their instructional repertoire on integrating digital technologies within the classroom.

Educação em Revista

ABSTRACT: Despite society’s adoption of mobile devices, we have yet to learn whether teachers perceive these artifacts as an innovation and what their potential is for teacher development and practice. This study aims to answer the following questions: what does mobile application affordances teachers perceive for their professional development and practice? What do these affordances reveal concerning Rogers (2003) innovation attributes, namely: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability? The analysis of eleven teachers’ narratives indicates that teachers do perceive the affordances of their devices for professional development. As for instruction, these teachers report that lack of school equipment and the need for a curriculum that includes the use of emergent technologies may indicate a low degree of compatibility, an attribute concerning a social system’s values. The reported affordances indicate the need for a new value system if the adoption...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2017

Students rarely practice math outside of school requirements, which we refer to as the "math-practice gap". This gap might be the reason why students struggle with math, making it urgent to develop means by which to address it. In the current paper, we propose that math apps offer a viable solution to the math-practice gap: Online apps can provide access to a large number of problems, tied to immediate feedback, and delivered in an engaging way. To substantiate this conversation, we looked at whether tablets are sufficiently engaging to motivate children's informal math practice. Our approach was to partner with education agencies via a community-based participatory research design. The three participating education agencies serve elementary-school students from low-SES communities, allowing us to look at tablet use by children who are unlikely to have extensive access to online math enrichment programs. At the same time, the agencies differed in several structural details, including whether our intervention took place during school time, after school, or during the summer. This allowed us to shed light on tablet feasibility under different organizational constraints. Our findings show that tablet-based math practice is engaging for young children, independent of the setting, the student's age, or the math concept that was tackled. At the same time, we found that student engagement was a function of the presence of caring adults to facilitate their online math practice.