When educators work closely with Netmath
Releasing the Joy of Learning: Why? How? The anxiety developed in the face of the inability to answer a mathematical question generates distress in children. A distress that we tend to underestimate. Colette Picard, an orthopedagogue and PhD in Mathematics Education, teaches at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT). As a passionate professional, she has chosen to make our users benefit from her knowledge by helping the Netmath team accomplish this common mission.
“As educators, we have the opportunity and the power to change things,” Colette Picard.
Children discouraged by mathematics, Colette knows a lot. It is with them and their teachers that she regularly intervenes to unlock areas of difficulty thanks to the pedagogical tools that she has developed throughout her research work. Tools, tested in class, that she has now made available to Netmath as an element of the development of a series of activities for the 2nd cycle of elementary education. Activities that relate, in particular, to the construction of the memorized repertoire of multiplication. How does the student understand and memorize the result of 2 x 3 equals 6?
One of the solutions given by Colette is to use the modes of representation proposed by Bruner in the 1960’s. These modes allow students to construct concepts in a more intuitive way by manipulating objects and representing what they have done with drawings before working on equations, and thus favour exploration rather than execution, by manipulating blocks, for example. This prevents the student from feeling helpless or incompetent, as may be the case when performing tasks where only symbols are used. This learning tool allows you to make more explicit the learned knowledge delivered in the framework of the course and promotes understanding. Our team takes care adapting it in Netmath to offer another way of understanding a mathematical concept, such as multiplication, and bypass any possible learning obstacles.
The objective of this collaboration with Colette Picard is to strengthen the support given to students on the platform and optimize their conditions for learning. In the same line of thought, Netmath seeks to create an environment in which the pupil feels comfortable, by assigning importance to the approach, not to the result, and by focusing on the playful aspects, thus seeking to create an environment in which the pupil feels at ease and finds enjoyment. A challenge in which Colette provides us with valuable assistance.
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