Theme: Having a software is not enough. Teachers need to be supported to learn how to use it. Markus faced challenges when starting his job in the US as the prior knowledge and background of the teachers their was different to his former working environment. He had to revise his tutorial material to introduce these teachers to GeoGebra and launched a survey on the complexity of GeoGebra (and DGS in general) and problems that occurred during the workshops.
Presentation by Markus Hohenwarter, Florida State University (GeoGebra) at the 4th European Workshop on Mathematical & Science eContents; see abstract
Details
Factors for successful Technology Use:
- knowledge about the mathematical content
- general computer skills
- knowledge about basic software use
- knowledge about technology integration: integrating “old” teaching methods with new methods
Technologies used in Mathematical Education
… that was to fast ;-(
Purpose of the study:
- Identification of common impediments that occur when introducing GeoGebra
- complexity criteria for DGS tools to determine general difficulty level
- design new workshop materials
Context & Environment:
- workshops at university/ schools with teachers
- all questions of the teachers were written down
- teachers had to rate the tools they used
- material was analysed …
Findings (Result of the survey); e.g. …
- algebraic input and commands are more challenging than use of DGS tools
- complexity analysis of introduced DGS tools, what makes a tool difficult to use? e.g. complexity depends on the number of actions the user has to perform/ the number of objects/ whether keyboard input is required, and on dependency/ influence between objects (classification tools into easy, middle, hard tools)
- …and much more …