Another characteristic of these virtual fraction manipulatives was that the applets
allowed students to experiment and test hypotheses in a safe environment. The guidedformat
features of the applets allowed guessing and trial-and-error, and at the same time,
would not allow students to submit an incorrect response. The applets are designed to
provide students with opportunities to see patterns in the mathematical processes they are
doing. For example, students could view two equivalent fractions in a visual format as
well as their related symbolic notations. They could also model the process of moving
two addends to create a sum to see that the addends became parts of the same whole, and
how to represent that sum symbolically. Students had the opportunity to try out an answer
and be incorrect without receiving judgmental feedback on their error. This
understanding may have helped to discourage common fraction error patterns.