Chapter 14: New Technologies in the Classroom: Towards a Semiotic Analysis

The introduction of new technologies (NT) in the classroom generally produces a very complex situation. This is particularly true for CAS systems, which are very sophisticated tools: see for example the discussion in Artigue (1997). Roughly speaking, a major question when such a new powerful instrument is introduced in a classroom is, “Q0: Can the software really support a better learning in students (through a suitable didactical design) and how? Which are its strong and feeble features?”

The paper scrutinizes this naïve question for a specific software, TINspire (TI-Ns; see: www.TI-Ns.com/tools/nspire/index.html) using two different approaches:

Using them it is possible to translate Q0 into two more precise research problems, labelled Q1 and Q2. To face them a suitable model is introduced, the Space of Action, Production and Communication (see Arzarello, 2008), which is apt to shape many didactical phenomena produced in the classroom because of the introduction of the NT (§3). The model points out some specific processes of students who are using TI-Ns: they are described with some detail in §§4.1, 4.2, comparing also the correspondent behaviours of students when using another software. The analysis is pursued focusing the different semiotic resources used by the subjects who are learning mathematics using TI-Ns. We get so a first picture of students’ learning processes while interacting with NT and this allows to give some precise answers to Q1 and Q2 (§4).