High school students performing touchscreen and applying isometries with GeoGebra
Touchscreen, Tablets, Isometric transformations in the plane, High School Students.
Technologies modify our ways of thinking and acting. Digital technologies with touch screens provide cognitive and epistemological transformations, particularly in mathematical learning. Recognizing touchscreen manipulations as a corporate and multimodal action can contribute to the process of conceptual construction of the learner. The tablet is not linked to the conception of technological fetish, that is, to use by use. This research has the question "What contributions does touch on tablet screens bring to student learning of isometries in the first year of high school?". Arrogating characteristics of a design research, the study is guided by the following questions: (i) How do students touch screens by performing reflection, translation and rotation in GeoGebra on tablets? and (ii) How can tapping screens help in the preparation and resolution of isometrics tasks? Singularly, we have as objectives: to elaborate and implement a sequence of isometrics tasks in GeoGebra and to analyze particularities of touches on screens in the process of isometrics learning. For that, data collection instruments were used (a) researcher records, (b) student records for the proposed activities, (c) icon sheet, (d) audio and video recordings, (e) recording of touches and traces made on the tablet screen (Telegravings) using the DU Recorder and (f) GeoGebra construction protocol. The research was carried out on the spot with students from the 1st year of high school in the Teacher Training course, from a School Unit in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Based on conceptions about embodied cognition and the Vigotskian school, this investigation points to the elaboration of a strategy composing resources made available by the device and a combination of manipulations. The construction of lines or points of reflection constituted itself as a semiotic mediator for the meaning of touches on screens, in particular, dragging and rotating, which, associated with the concept of translation and rotation, constituted the scope of the process of elaborating strategies for solving problems. isometrics tasks in the plane. The research also reveals that moments of setting, for the student, were fundamental for the construction of the geometric concepts involved. Revisiting telegravings and analyzing interactions fostered reflections on the design bristle and a sequence of tasks that ratify the thesis of the unconventional sequence (symmetry, rotation and translation) of isometries and learning by touching the screen in conjunction with icons, turns and dragging.