[Maths-Education] Re: ICT in mathematics

[dylanwiliam at mac.com]

Alan: Sarah asked specifically for studies that showed the impact of ICT on attainment, and the Cognitive Tutor is one of the best researched pieces of software for mathematics education.  While Carnegie Learning is a commercial company that has taken over marketing and distribution of the products generated by the people who developed the Cognitive Tutor, the research itself is very solid (and much of it dates from before Carnegie Learning became involved). I agree that third party evaluations, such as those undertaken by Mathematica, would be better, and of course educationalists should evaluate the merits of the studies, but the fact that the research is now being used to support a commercial enterprise does not invalidate the original findings.

Dylan



On 4 Mar 2011, at 14:33, Alan Rogerson wrote:

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> Dear Sarah,
> I am surprised that Dylan did not mention that the organisation below is a commercial publisher, whose primary objective must be, of course, to make money, not to do objective research nor to assist teachers or students in a philanthropic or educational way. The problem here with any of their own reported research would be: how objective is it?
> Please, please do not misunderstand me - there are many commercial companies doing work that we would regard as useful, and a symbiosis between commercial and educational bodies would seem to be inevitable in our society. But it behooves educationalists themselves to evaluate and assess the educational merits or otherwise of commercial products, this is simply a general statement of good practice, common sense even, it does not in any way impinge on the merits of commercial companies such as Carnegie.
> Have you tried Google, most questions similar to yours can be answered by several hours work sifting through the many pages there? There are as you surely know many, many programmes, software, projects, and so called virtual schools handling ICT, but very much less objective or educational research being done on them. I was, however, very impressed with the Nationally supported Educational work on ICT coordinated from Chichester University, when I visited them for a day several years ago. You might like to ask them?
> Having worked myself in the field of ICT (as it is now called) since about 1966 could I also especially draw to your attention the Virtual School for the Gifted, now defunct but at one time the world's only genuine interactive virtual school, with whom I worked for ten years as a teacher, the last two years as Manager or Coordinator.  I believe it provided a very effective model for ICT learning and there was considerable anecdotal evidence of its success in helping children learn mathematics, and other subjects!
> Best wishes,
> Alan
> 
> 
> On 04/03/2011 14:53, dylanwiliam at mac.com wrote:
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>> Sarah
>> 
>> One of the real success stories in the use of ICT to support learning in mathematics is Carnegie Learning's Cognitive Tutor for algebra.
>> 
>> A summary of the research evidence can be found at:
>> 
>> http://www.carnegielearning.com/research/reports/
>> 
>> Dylan
>> 
>> 
>> On 4 Mar 2011, at 11:29, Maughan, Sarah wrote:
>> 
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>>> This seemed to bounce back first time so I am trying again.  Apologies if you receive it twice!
>>> 
>>> Hi
>>> I am trying to find some evidence about whether ICT has a positive impact on attainment in mathematics and wonder if anyone has any good examples?  If you look at syntheses of research they tend to find little or no positive impact, over and above good teaching.  However, I believe there are some examples of where the findings are more positive, usually in terms of a particular kind of ICT in a particular context.  Can anyone let me know which are the key research reports in this area?  I am particularly interested in impact on attainment rather than motivation or engagement (even though ultimately this is likely to improve attainment), so ICT use that directly helps with understanding of particular concepts for example.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for your help.
>>> 
>>> Sarah
>>> 
>>> Sarah Maughan
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