An Alternate Platform in the Teaching and Learning of Geometry to JC Students

Abstract

Schools urged to tap on IT to develop thinking in the classroom during the IT Master Plan Phase 1, have invested in setting up infrastructures to promote e-learning. Vendors were invited to set up Learning Management Systems (LMS). However, in practice e-learning was a means of supplementing live lectures conducted by teachers with the posting of worksheets and assessments on these LMS. This observation is due to the high value held by teachers on the interactions between them and their students which could not be provided by e-learning. Moreover, the LMS lacks emphasis on the required content found in the school subject syllabuses. This paper seeks to explore the use of an e-platform with interactive visualization capability to engage students. Teachers were invited to develop the content of selected topics based on the P. M. van Hiele (1986) model which postulates that student growth in geometry understanding is sequential in nature. The presentation will demonstrate how geometric thought among JC students could be developed by using a prototype e-package to guide them through the five levels of linearly ordered stages of geometric learning starting from intuitive, analytical, inductive, and deductive learning to the fifth stage of rigor thinking involving geometric reasoning.