[Maths-Education] Re: Maths-Education Digest, Vol 77, Issue 12

[Forsythe, Susan K.]

I know that the interesting discussion on the value of ICT has moved on a bit since it first started but I wanted to share my experience.
For my Masters dissertation, which I completed in 2006, I enquired into whether teaching and learning of geometrical concepts through the medium of Dynamic Geometry Software (DGS) could be shown to be effective. I was still a classroom teacher at this point and, for my study, I taught two parallel classes in year 7, two of the geometry topics from the year 7 programme of study (from the English National Framework for Teaching Mathematics). The target group worked with DGS and the control group worked using pencil and paper methods. Both classes had the same number of lessons for the two topics and the control group did a lot of practical activities so that it would not be all bookwork and I, as the teacher, would be as enthusiastic about their lessons as with the computer based lessons.
The study used quantitative methods to analyse the effectiveness of the two teaching methods (by testing the children). This had to be done using pencil and paper tests because the control class had not learnt to use the software. By the end of the study there was a statistically significant difference between the test results of the two classes. The target class, who had learnt through the medium of the computer, achieved better results in the tests. The results were even more pronounced for the target boys.
I appreciate that this is only a study carried out for a Masters degree and only for a small sample size of two school classes. However, if anyone is interested then I would be happy to email them my dissertation. I also wrote an article based on my results in Mathematics Teaching, no. 202.


Sue Forsythe
Lecturer in Mathematics Education
School of Education
University of Leicester

-----Original Message-----
From: maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:maths-education-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ng Foo Keong
Sent: 14 March 2011 06:39
To: maths-education at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: [Maths-Education] Re: Maths-Education Digest, Vol 77, Issue 12

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The conventional wisdom may or may not be correct.  I feel it iis not about
the
wisdom, it is about the actions of the interested parties and how we can
work
together.  We can do much much more to encourage more of the Sugata Mitras,
Markus Hohenwarters and Salman Khans of this  world to come forward than
to just sit around and complain about the lack of progress.

sincerely yours,
Ng, Foo Keong





On 07/03/2011 06:05, Ng Foo Keong wrote:
> > i'd like us to distinguish between the potential of ICT and what has
> > actually been achieved in our evaluations of the effectiveness of ICT.
>
> This goes against the conventional wisdom which can be traced not just
> centuries, millenia back in time: "The proof of the pudding is in the
> eating" (14th century, according to Oxford Dictionary), "Rhodes is here,
> here is where you jump!" (Aesop).
>
> Alexandre Borovik
>
> --
> Professor Alexandre Borovik * University of Manchester
> Web:       http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/
> Wordpress: http://micromath.wordpress.com/
> Academia:  http://manchester.academia.edu/AlexandreBorovik
>

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