Using an educational software Graphers in elementary school mathematics

초등 수학 수업에서의 소프트웨어(Graphers) 활용

The graph unit(chapter) is a good example of a topic in elementary school mathematics for which computer use can be incorporated as part of the instruction. Teaching graph can be facilitated by using the graphing utilities of computers, which make it possible to observe the property of many types of graphs. This study was concerned with utilizing an educational software Graphers as an instructional tool in teaching to help young students gain a better understanding of graph concepts. For this purpose, three types of instructional activities using Graphers were shown in the paper. Graphers is a data-gathering tool for creating pictorial data chosen from several data sets. They can represent their data on a table or with six types of graphs such as Pictograph, Bar Graph, Line Graph, Circle Graph, Grid Plot and Loops. They help students to select the graph(s) which are the most appropriate for the purpose of analyzing data while comparing various types of graphs. They also let them modify or change graphs, such as adding grid lines, changing the axis scale, or adding title and labels. Eventually, students have a chance to interpret graphs meaningfully and in their own way.