Date

2004-07-11

Author

Ubuz, Behiye

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Geometry is one of the important areas of mathematics over the world. Geometry provides experiences that help students develop understanding of shapes and their properties. It enables students to solve relevant problems and to apply geometric properties to real-world situations. National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics endorsed that geometry was one of the ten proposed basis skill areas (NCSM, 1976) and is indeed a basic skill that should be taught to students of all ability levels (Sherard, 1981). Technology is promoted and effective tool to teach and learn geometry. When technology is used appropriately, it can provide a rich environment in which students' geometric understanding and intuition can be developed (NCTM, 1989). Calculators and computers with appropriate software transform the mathematics classroom into a laboratory much like the environment in many science classes, where students use technology to investigate, conjecture, and verify their findings (NTCM, 1989). One of the important vehicles of technological chance in geometry classroom is the use of Geometers' Sketchpad (GSP) (Jackiw, 1991). This software allows mathematics to be taught visually to the class as a whole, to small groups, or to individuals by creating dynamic and productive three way interaction between teacher, student, and computer (Hativa, 1984). GSP enables a student to " drag " part of configurations around and other parts of sketch automatically adjust. It enables students and teachers to investigate and construct unlimited geometric shapes. The shapes are first created and then they are explored, manipulated and transformed to ideal concept. Students cannot be creative enough in a traditional class (Schoenfeld, 1989). GSP puts geometry exploration tools directly in the hands of students, enabling them to test whether their geometric constructions work in general or whether they have discovered a special case of the original construction. This software also has the capability to link synthetic constructions to analytic equations, and coordinate representations. Furthermore, challenging and time consuming mathematical problems could be easier through dynamic software (Lappan and Winter, 1984). As a result, GSP is used for exploration and guided or open-ended discovery—enabling students to test their conjectures and be more engaged in their learning. When the literature was searched, on the use of Geometer's Sketchpad, the studies investigated the geometric learning of secondary school students during instruction, on the basis of the Van Hiele model, with GSP as a tool (Battista, 2002; Choi-Koh, 1999).

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/74948

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Conference / Seminar