A PILOT STUDY USING TABLET COMPUTERS FOR TEACHING ADDITION TO THE FIRST GRADE STUDENTS

The purpose of this study is to investigate if tablet computers help improve primary school students' mathematical achievements regarding addition. Our research compares the level of mathematical competence of the students taught using our tablet computers oriented learning method which specifically takes advantage of 'Realistic Mathematics Education' (RME) for the concept of addition, as opposed to traditional teaching methodology. The designed software consisted of several activities with and without the use of computers for addition. It was designed following the background of the RME theory. Moreover, we use the mathematical test based on TEMA-3 to explore the use of tablet computers in the primary classroom for teaching basic mathematical concepts. It is a task orientated test which attends to measure the level of mathematical competence developed for students of the first grade. The present study was a pilot research of quasi-experimental design with one experimental and one control groups. We found that the students who were taught with educational intervention based on tablet computers and RME had a significant improvement on their general mathematical achievement and addition in comparison to those taught using the traditional teaching method.