The Descartes project is the product
of several years of creating and using pedagogical material which incorporates
the use of information technology as a teaching aid. This experience has led
us to believe that in order to use information technology as a tool in the classroom
the following points must be considered:
- the teacher should be able to understand how
the material works in a reasonably short space of time
- the material should be easy for students to
use and not take too long to learn how to use it
- the
content should be the same, or as close as possible, to the content of
the corresponding curriculum for that school year.
- the
material should be easily adaptable to the way of teaching and methodology
adopted by the teacher to suit their particular students
Furthermore, this kind of learning tool should
favour:
- interactive methodology so that the student
forms part of his/her own learning.
- group and individual study. Both teamwork
and individual attention are considered to be very important.
- attention to variety.
The material should be flexible so that it can be adapted whenever
necessary.
The project outlined
here has been designed on the basis of these premises.
A very powerful
tool has been developed to design pages, chapters and electronic books in which
graphs and calculations come to life through interactive windows.
These windows allow students to the following:
- investigate properties
- acquire concepts and see how different
concepts are related
- put forward and test hypotheses
- draw conclusions
- state properties and theorems
- think about and solve problems
- in
general, carry out activities which form an essential part of any maths
lesson.
Click here to see the tool
and its applications.
| |
Juan
Madrigal Muga |
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| Spanish Ministry of Education, Social Afairs and Sport. Year 2003 |
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