Technology Use in Secondary Mathematics Classes: How It Affects Students' Understanding*

Technology use in secondary mathematics courses has the potential to bring about broad changes in the learning environment and teaching pedagogy, allowing students to communicate and collaborate in new ways and to conjecture, justify, and generalize findings; however this potential is only realized when teachers use technology in ways encouraging these outcomes (Galbraith, 2006). The purpose of this study is to examine the use of technology in the researcher’s classes and to evaluate the effectiveness of its use in relation to the capabilities enabled by such use. This self-study was performed in honors geometry and AP calculus classes, and data collection included transcripts of three class periods and student responses to both forced-response and open-ended surveys. The study found that when students are the primary users of technology, they are more engaged and higher levels of understanding are attained, especially in terms of relating different representations and generalizing patterns.*Peer Reviewed Paper Published in JOTI (see http://works.bepress.com/leah_nillas/115/)