Using Flash ActionScript as a tool to design instructional tool for mathematics explorations

Abstract

As school teachers, difficulties often occur when we integrate technology into the teaching of mathematics. A lack of powerful tools and instructional models are possible reasons. We strongly believe that electronic digital materials for teaching and leaning should help teachers present mathematical concepts more clearly, and that they can be used to provide interactive learning environments so that students have a chance to explore mathematical concepts and improve their conceptual understanding. As we all know, Flash is a powerful tool for creating animations for use over the Web. With Flash we can design innovative and valuable animations in the internet. With its strong functions, Flash ActionScript could be used to create highly interactive software. In this study, Flash ActionScript was used as a tool to design instructional software for mathematics learning. Two software will be discussed in this presentation. (1) Number exploration: During the first few school years, teachers need to use manipulative objects, such as counters and base-ten pieces, to introduce basic number concepts. This software was designed to introduce number concepts. In stead of manipulating concrete objects in class, teachers use it as an instructional tool to introduce basic number concepts. (2) Pattern exploration: Recognize and understand a pattern has been an important content in mathematics learning. This software was oriented from a nice class activity. Students were asked to explore possible results by changing ways of banding on a circle lattice. The development of this software reduce the manipulating time and students will have much time to focus on finding the patterns. Results from this study, we suggest that Flash ActionScript can be a useful tool to design instructional tools for mathematics learning. Ideas from many classroom activities can be translated into software designing.