Collaborative work with Android Applicationsresearch and practice

Resumo

The rise of mobile devices in our society is determining certain daily practices and, consequently, has encouraged their incorporation in the classroom. However, in order to ensure effectiveness, the teacher must select the best way to organize teaching. Therefore, we have developed a research about the design, implementation and evaluation of teacher training worksheets in which students have worked collaboratively with Android applications as didactical resources. The project has a threefold purpose: the learning of certain mathematical contents, the use of teaching strategies that can be transferred to primary education and the analysis of the effectiveness of this teaching. The project has consisted on the design of Android applications, as well as worksheets. These worksheets included the rules to use the apps and some tasks for the students to discuss in group. They must write their solutions when they reach an agreement that must be mathematically justified. There were three sessions in which students have worked in collaborative groups. The observation and analysis of a pair of different group productions in each session has been done according to different dimensions related to collaborative work: regulation, positive interdependence, construction of shared knowledge, controversies, group participation, cognitive level and self-evaluation. One of our results was argumentation/discussion is essential for knowledge construction and the differences in learning between teams are closely related to their dynamic as a collaborative group. Android applications were useful as didactical resources, although their use did not determine the knowledge construction completely.