This document discusses using smartphones to teach mathematics in a contextualized, collaborative, and constructivist manner. It presents issues with traditional math education and proposes using a new "Mobimath" smartphone toolkit to engage students in real-world math activities outside the classroom. An in-school trial with 20 students and 5 geometry-focused activities is described. Emerging themes from student feedback highlight improved problem-solving skills and attitudes towards math from using smartphones for collaborative, applied learning experiences.

1. Contextualisation, collaboration, constructivism and
smartphones for teaching mathematics
Brendan Tangney, Patricia O’Hanlon, Stefan Weber, Elizabeth Oldham
Centre for Research in IT in Education, School of Education and School of Computer Science & Statistics, Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland
David Knowles, Jennifer Munnelly, Ronan Watson
National Digital Research Centre, Crane St, The Digital Hub, Dublin 8, Ireland
/www.slideshare.net/tangney
tangney@tcd.ie
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2. Issues in Math Education
 An over emphasis on didactic
teaching
 A behaviourist approach to learning
 Overemphasis on procedure
 Emphasis on content over literacy
 Decontextualisation
 Focus on assessment
 Teaching by non specialist teachers
(Conway & Sloane, 2005; Lyons, Lynch, Close, Sheerin, & Boland, 2003; Papert, 1993; Blumenfield,
Marx, Patrick, Krajcik, & Soloway, 1997)
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3. How Many People On Grafton St?
 Contextualised
 Constructivist
 Collaborative
 (Patten et al, 2006)
1
3 2
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4. Irish Context
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5. Traditional Math Tools
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6. Mobimath Toolkit
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7. Research Agenda
 To develop and validate the
efficacy of an integrated
smartphone based toolkit for
the teaching of mathematics
which follows a contextualised,
constructivist, collaborative,
philosophy.
 Align the learning activities and
supporting instructional
material with the formal
curriculum
 1st Year of the Irish
Secondary School system (~
12-13 years old).
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8. Modes of Use
1/2?
1/4?
1/8? 1/4!
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9. Probability Tools
Teacher Console - Sample screenshot of class collaboration
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10. Geometry Tools
 Measure distance – outside (GPS)
 Measure distance – inside
(accelerometer)
 Measure angle of elevation
(accelerometer)
 Measure angle of rotation
(accelerometer)
 Visual mapping tool (camera)
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11. Technical Architecture
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12. User View
Number &
Geometry Algebra
Operation
Common Functionality (voting, note taking etc) +
Teacher console
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13. In School Trial
20 students, 5 activities, 2 hours per activity
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14. Geometry Activities
 Measure the area of large irregular shapes on playing
field
 Height of structures
 The music festival camping problem – how many tents
can be pitched on the sports field
 How many hockey balls could fit into the (irregularly
enclosed) hockey field.
 Investigate the Golden Mean in buildings and people’s
faces.
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15. Sample Learning Activity
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16. Data Collection Instruments
 Usability
 SUS (Brooke 1996)
 MPUQ (Ryu 2006)
 Attitude – Mathematical and Technology Attitude Scale (Pierce
2007)
 Teacher observation
 Whole class discussions
 Student workbooks
 Interviews with students
 (Delayed tests for content retention)
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17. Sample Comments
 “You are involved in the question, you are actually doing something, you are more
engaged”
 “If you were working from the textbook, you get into a rhythm of doing the same sums
every time, but out there you have to think about it more.”
 ‘It’s weird the question was a trig problem. Like one minute I was using sin, cos, tan and
the next minute I was working out the average distance reading on my calculator-that’s not
trig. It was good to see how different types of maths links together!’
 “This is the way to do maths I felt I could calculate the height of anything”
 “We weren’t working from a book with pretend numbers; we were outside actually finding
the numbers to solve the problem-it was more realistic this way”.
 “When you are doing it you can see it more clearly what it’s for rather than just working
with triangles in the textbook.”
 “3 (problems tackled) outside (the classroom) was better than 10 in the book, because
(with the book) you just repeat what you did rather than think about what you are doing.”
 “The hardest part was working out the way you had to do it....”
 ”It was funner but it wasn’t necessarily easier!”
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18. Emerging Themes
 Exercising mathematical problem solving skills;
 ‘Real world’ mathematics awareness;
 Improved attitudes to mathematics;
 Smartphone affordances;
 Benefit of collaborative learning.
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19. Two Issues
 The degree to which the
teacher (is allowed to)
embrace the pedagogical
approach.
 Device ownership.
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20. Selected Bibliography
 Brooke, J. (1996). "SUS: a "quick and dirty" usability scale". In P. W. Jordan, B. Thomas, B. A. Weerdmeester, & A. L. McClelland. Usability Evaluation in Industry.
London: Taylor and Francis. http://www.usabilitynet.org/trump/documents/Suschapt.doc.
 Cobb, P., Yackel, E., & Wood, T. (1992). Constructivist Alternative To The Representational View Of Mind In Mathematics Education. Research in Mathematics
Education, 23(1), 2-33.
 Conway, P. F., & Sloane, F. C. (2005). International Trends in Post-Primary Mathematics Education. Retrieved. from
http://www.ncca.ie/uploadedfiles/mathsreview/intpaperoct.pdf
 Cuoco, A. (2001). Mathematics for Teaching. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 48(2), 168-174.
 Daher, W. (2009). Students’ Perceptions of Learning Mathematics with Cellular Phones and Applets International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning,
4(1).
 Ferrini-Mundy, J., & Schmidt, W. H. (2003). International Comparative Studies in Mathematics Education: Opportunities for Collaboration and Challenges for
Researchers. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 36(3), 164-174.
 Goos, M. (2004). Learning Mathematics in a Classroom Community of Inquiry. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 35, 258-291.
 Lyons, M., Lynch, K., Close, S., Sheerin, E., & Boland, P. (2003). Inside classrooms : the teaching and learning of mathematics in social context. Dublin: Institute of
Public Administration.
 Donald Norman, (1998) The Psychology of Everyday Things.
 Monaghan, J., & Sheryn, L. (2006). How do Secondary Teachers make Mathematics More Applicable. Journal of Mathematics in School(September 2006).
 Patten, B., Arnedillo Sánchez, I., N., Tangney, B. Designing collaborative, constructionist and contextual applications for handheld devices. Computers & Education,
Volume 46, Issue 3, pages 294-308, April 2006.
 Pierce Robyn, Stacey Kaye, and Barkatsas Anastasios, A scale for monitoring students' attitudes to learning mathematics with technology. Computers & Education,
2007, 48(2): p. 285-300.
 Papert, S. (1993). Mindstorms Children ,Computers and Powerful Ideas (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
 Ryu, Y. S., and Smith-Jackon, T. L. 2006. Reliability and Validity of the Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ). Journal of Usability Studies, 2, 1, 39--53.
 Tangney B., et al., MobiMaths: An approach to utilising smartphones in teaching mathematics, in Mlearn2010 - 9th world conference on mobile and contextual
learning. 2010: Malta. p. 9-15.
 Voogt, J., & Pelgrum, H. (2005). ICT and curriculum change. Human Technology; an Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 1(2), 157–175.
 Wijers, M., Jonker, V., Kerstens, K. (2008), MobileMath: the Phone, the Game and the Math 2nd European Conference on Game Based Learning, pp
507-516.
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