Abstract:

Lately, in the Czech Republic, there is a very current demand for the development of students' digital literacy in the teaching of mathematics, while there are more and more digital tools on the market that can be used for this purpose. And we're not just talking about the hardware side, but the software as well. There is a lot of software that is free, but the question is how applicable it is in education. In particular, it is about the software being intuitive and running ideally through a web browser. The use of mathematical software in school mathematics is a current global trend, which is supported, for example, by the Wolfram Research company mentioned here. The purpose of the investigation was to verify the fact that step number three of the four-step scheme for solving mathematical problems (see Conrad Wolfram's book - The Math(s) Fix: And Education Blueprint for the AI ​​Age) can really be successfully implemented, for example, using the Wolfram Cloud.

In this post, we will discuss the Wolfram Cloud tool from Wolfram Research, which is behind the well-known not only mathematical software Wolfram Mathematica. We tested this tool on 3 groups of pupils at a secondary school in the Czech Republic. In total, there were over 40 pupils who took part in the survey. They were 7th and 8th graders. The goal was to show the pupils prepared materials in the Wolfram Cloud environment on the topic of least common multiple, greatest common divisor and Diophantine equations. The pupils had already covered the curriculum, they should have the appropriate mathematical apparatus to solve such problems and they should also already have experience with the Wolfram Cloud platform. Each material contained a basic introduction to the given mathematical apparatus, but also interactive elements of examples, and the emphasis was placed on the element helping pupils to understand the problem and to be able to derive the consequences of changing the parameters entered into the interactive element.

The pupils devoted themselves to the activity as part of the project day one morning, when they had enough time to go through everything and consult with the teacher. An investigation was subsequently carried out with the pupils in the form of an interview (joint discussion) to obtain feedback.

Despite the initial fear of the activities, all the pupils actively participated in exploring the materials (Wolfram Notebooks), and in the end there was a very pleasant atmosphere in the class, when the students themselves came up with what they could use the given tool for and how the visualization of the task helped them. Subsequently, the pupils started editing the materials themselves and testing for other examples that they came up with.

So it can be summarized that most of the pupils were excited about working with this tool, but what is more important, all pupils were actively involved in research with this tool and experienced success there themselves in the form of solving mathematical problems. This approach corresponds both to the development of pupils' digital literacy and to the constructivist approach known as Inquiry-based teaching.

Keywords:

Wolfram Cloud, Wolfram Research, LCM, GCD, Diophantine equation, Inquiry-based teaching.