AN APPLICATION OF THE INFORMATIC AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS TO DEVELOP STUDENTS' ABILITIES TO SOLVE PATTERN PROBLEMS

The purpose of this paper was to explore the development of students' abilities to solve linear and quadratic pattern problems with pictorial contexts via an internet discussion board. It will be a pedagogy innovation that mathematical activities accompanied with the teacher's guidance is shifted to Internet to carry out. The participants in this study were forty 10-to-11-year-old students from Taiwan. They were free to develop their abilities under a non-threatening environment of Internet. An Internet discussion board can be viewed as another channel for supporting students to work on mathematics. This activity lasted for a semester. The conclusions drawn from this study were: The students' patterning abilities consists of the levels: 0, 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, 4c. Students are from level 0, 1 (seeing of sensory) and level 2, 3a (pattern seeking), arithmetic thinking, to level 3b (pattern recognition), arithmetic-algebraic thinking transition with understanding how to approach generality, and finally to level 4 (generalization), algebraic thinking with ability in making a general rule. In addition the students at level 4 can achieve far generalizations, while those at level 3b can only achieve near generalizations. An ability model of solving linear and quadratic pattern problems with pictorial contents was established based on the relationships above.