Technology’s Promise for Mathematics and Science Learning
Abstract Mathematics and Science Education Standards at the national level call for a shift in emphasis from “focusing on student acquisition of information to focusing on student understanding and use of scientific knowledge, ideas, and inquiry processes” (NRC, 1996 p. 52). Scientists and mathematicians explore the physical world for reproducible patterns that they represent by models and organize into theories according to laws (Hestenes, 2004). Emerging web-based computer technologies have dramatically affected classroom teachers’ ability to guide students’ search for these reproducible patterns in nature by displaying real-time data in visual forms that are more easily understood by learners at increasingly younger ages. Visual technologies allow for increasing sophistication and power of abstraction enabled through symbol systems based upon more primitive objects.
Presider: Mara Alagic, Wichita State University