Journal Zone:

An Interactive, Online, Journaling Experience in Learning Mathematics
By

Mhairi (Vi) Maeers and Beth Warkentin

[Faculty of Education, University of Regina]

And

Terry Cote, Heather Gantefoer, and Renee Montenegro

[Sacred Heart School, Regina, Saskatchewan]

At the

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Regional Conference

October 17, 2002

1-2 p.m. Kenosee Room, Regina Inn, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

In the Winter 2002 semester Early Childhood preservice teachers (Pre-Kindergarten-Grade 3) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina were paired with 18 Grade 3 children in a local elementary school and 'corresponded' with one another through an interactive online client/server software program called Journal Zone.

The intention was for participants to write and illustrate journal pages to highlight what they were doing and learning about in mathematics, to access the journal pages of others in the project--especially those paired together, and to write comments on the journal pages of their colleagues. Beth and Vi were interested in the viability of this program for mathematical understanding and hence collected and analysed data to determine the viability and usefulness of such a tool in learning mathematics. This session will demonstrate the program called Journal Zone and will highlight research findings on the impact of Journal Zone on learning mathematics and on attitudes towards mathematics. Teachers involved in this project will share their observations of their children's involvement in the project.

This project is continuing this Fall 2002 semester, but this time we have 82 grade 2 AND 5 children and 4 grade 2/5 teachers in the same school. The children are in mixed-grade groups with at least one grade 2 and one grade 5 in each group. The 28 Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 3 preservice teachers have groups of 3-4 children with whom to interact. Again we are collecting data and we may have time to share some of our initial ideas of how this semester is progressing.

Our presentation will proceed as follows:

1. Some history on this project.
2. Rationale/framework for this project
3. Demonstration of Journal Zone http://www.microworlds.com/jz_solutions/index.html
4. Let's hear from the teachers
5. What kind of experience did our preservice students have?
6. Questions and comments from the audience