I have recently agreed to take part in a pilot of incorporating technology into my Math teaching. I have several students who have personal laptops in the classroom for written output difficulties and I felt like this was a great year to take on a project involving technology.
I was doing a little research on technology and mathematics and came across an interesting article entitled : Technology’s Impact on Fraction Learning: An experimental comparison of virtual and physical manipulatives. This article compares physical and virtual manipulatives on the topic of fractions. The study was conducted over a 10 day session with evaluations at pre-unit, 5 days and 10 days. The research was conducted by Maria Mendiburo and Ted Hasselbring
The study revealed the many benefits of using technology as a way for students to use manipluatives:
- Students using virtual manipulative were able to do more practice than physical manipulatives.
- Virtual manipulatives were more time-efficient than physical manipulatives
I thought this was interesting to share, as the NCTM are really promoting the use of manipulatives, and the amount of manipulative provided and available are just sufficient for a full class. This causes trouble in implementing physical manipulatives in a lesson.
Angela
That's a really interesting study. I always felt like I was cheating somehow if I used virtual manipulatives. Based on this paper, will you switch over to using all virtual manipulatives or continue to use a mix of both?
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