[Maths-Education] Re: ICT in mathematics

[Alan Rogerson]

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
>> Director of Research
>> National Foundation for Educational Research
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