Digital media offer new opportunities to visualise mathematics and to engage students in interactive activities. The launching of digital teaching platforms in mathematics has, however, been met with some hesitation, and printed textbooks still play a substantial role in classrooms. This study addresses questions about how affordances of the…

Phase changes in water are experienced in everyday life but students often struggle to understand mechanisms that regulate them. Human thermal comfort is closely related to humidity, evaporative heat loss and heat transfer. The purpose of the present study is to assist students in the evaluation of human thermal comfort. Such a goal is achievable…

A unique aspect of the implementation of a computer algebra system (CAS) at a comprehensive university in the U.S. allowed us to compare the student success and failure rates to the traditional method of teaching college algebra. Due to space limitations, the university offered sections of both CAS and traditional simultaneously and, upon…

The purpose of our modeling effort is to predict future outcomes. We assume the data collected are both accurate and relatively precise. For our oscillating data, we examined several mathematical modeling forms for predictions. We also examined both ignoring the oscillations as an important feature and including the oscillations as an important…

This case study documents the struggles and successes encountered by a pre-calculus teacher while using Classroom Connectivity Technology (CCT) daily in her community college mathematics course. CCT refers to a wireless communication system that connects a teacher's computer with an individual student's handheld calculator and has been associated…

This article reports a subset of findings from a larger study centered on designing a series of six digital learning objects to help Grade 5 (age 10-12) students begin to consider the nature of models (understood as the physical or mental representation of objects, phenomena, or processes), the particle nature of matter, and the behavior of…

The study deals with the development of an analogy-integrated e-learning module on Cellular Respiration, which is intended to facilitate conceptual understanding of students with different brain hemisphere dominance and learning styles. The module includes eight analogies originally conceptualized following the specific steps used to prepare…

We conducted a series of summer workshops on bioinformatics to increase educators' knowledge of this new field of inquiry with the assumption that their knowledge will, in turn, impact student achievement. The workshops incorporated experiential learning and self-reflection (Loucks-Horsley et al. 1998). Educators demonstrated significant increases…

This paper explores the use of spreadsheets to develop an exploratory environment where mathematics students can develop their own understanding of the parameters of commonly encountered families of functions: linear, logarithmic, exponential and power. The key to this understanding involves opening up the definition of rate of change from the…

The use of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) is becoming increasingly important and widespread in mathematics research and teaching. In this paper, I will report on a questionnaire study enquiring about mathematicians' use of CAS in mathematics teaching in three countries; the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hungary. Based on the responses…

Algebra has been identified as the foundational course for all other mathematics courses. Yet, research has shown that African-American students are low achievers in all strands of mathematics (NCES, 2001). Computers, on the other hand, have been marketed as an instructional tool to teach and reinforce classroom instructions. This study…

This paper was developed with the goal of enhancing the mathematical preparation of secondary school teachers in the technological paradigm. It shows how two-variable inequalities can be utilized as models for the construction of geometric objects using the software Graphing Calculator 3.5 (produced by Pacific Tech) as a relation grapher. An…

The culture of the young may, in fact, be a harbinger enticing us to follow a pathway from which will emerge the re-conceptualized educational practices of this new century. The culture of those older will, no doubt, strive to maintain the more golden aspects of their now historical learning experiences. One of the tasks of all educators, but…

This paper was prepared in response to the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences recommendations for the preparation of secondary teachers. It shows how using trigonometry as a conceptual tool in spreadsheet-based applications enables one to develop mathematical understanding in the context of constructing geometric representations of unit…

This paper describes a study aimed to identify most common impediments related to the introduction of an open-source mathematical software package GeoGebra. We report on the analysis of data collected during a three-week professional development programme organised for middle and high school teachers in Florida. The study identified challenges…