A Study on the Development of an Interactive Web Based Resource Center for K-12 Mathematics Teachers

초.중등 수학교사를 위한 상호 작용적 웹기반 자료센터 개발 연구

As the new century begins, it is clear that K-l2 education is going through a major change. The increasing power and affordability of personal computers along with wide spread use of the Internet has not only changed the landscape for communication but it has opened up new and exciting opportunities for education. One of the ways that Internet could help improve education is to act as an interactive communication link to gather the knowledge and experience of all the teachers and to serve as an open forum for discussing and exchanging innovative ideas. But developing a successful site is not an easy task since the success of the site depends on the level of participation and cooperation of teachers. In this paper, learnings derived from the development of an interactive web based resource center for K-12 mathematics teacher are described and recommendations for developing an effective site for teachers are suggested. The development of an interactive resource center for mathematics teachers showed that while interest for a web based resource is very high, the main obstacle for effective teacher participation is lack of easy accessibility of internet by teachers, and lack of computer and internet training for teachers. The technical issues regarding hardware installation, software development and cost were minimal. Accessibility will improve in time as more and more schools are connected to the internet, but this alone will not be enough. The study suggests that in order to bring together teachers on the internet more effort needs to be made in training teachers on the use of computers and the internet.