Words Are Silver, Mouse Clicks Are Gold?

Abstract

How do we teach children to express and communicate ideas in a formal and informal mode? What type of language do they need in a concrete context? How should they determine a proper level of formalization of their descriptions? In an attempt to explore these issues we carried out an experiment with 5th graders from three Bulgarian schools during which the students experienced the whole process of generating a good description – becoming aware of the ambiguity, producing counterexamples, reducing the ambiguity, eliminating the redundancy. The educational scenarios and the Cubix Editor (an Elica-Logo application) used in the experimental activities were developed in the frames of the DALEST European project. The first impressions confirm our belief that the language is playing significant role in the learning experiences of the students, that the relationship between thoughts and words involves back and forth reshaping process. While constructing and describing cubical structures they articulated their own ideas, developed concepts collaboratively with others, moved between everyday and mathematical terms, between procedural and declarative style, exploring the boundaries of understanding. Such interplay with the step-wise refinement of their descriptions of cubical structures would hopefully enhance students’ skills for working with mathematical definitions, on one hand, and prepare them for writing, debugging and explaining programs, on the other.