PT10 and PT14 respectively stated both the positive and negative aspects of using
GeoGebra in lessons in terms of students’ learning as follows:
“Positive: It makes students develop a positive attitude towards mathematics.
It makes students learn hard-to-understand topics. It rids the courses of their
boringness. It shortens the time in which theoretical information is learned.
It creates extra time to put the theoretical information into practice. It raises
the interest of the student towards the course.
Negative: There may arise problems if the students are not supervised when
they are using the computers. It may not be possible to apply this teaching to
students whose backgrounds are insufficient for computer assisted
instruction.”
“Positive: With GeoGebra, students can learn by themselves. Mathematics
can be rid of its abstractness. Answers to the question ‘why’ can be found for
many mathematical expressions. Many things can be learned in a short space
of time.
Negative: Students can lose self-confidence if they cannot learn how to use
the software. If the students do not have their own computers at home, there
Australian Journal of Teacher Education
Vol 38, 12, December 2013 12
will not be reinforcement since they will use the software only at school, and
what is learned will be jumbled.”
In their answers to this question, PT22, PT25 and PT30 mentioned only the positive
aspects given respectively as follows:
“It will definitely have a positive effect. Showing students that they can do
something by themselves will be very effective at times where students are
rather bored with plain explanations. Many students’ viewpoints, interest
and attitudes towards mathematics will change in a positive way.”
“The difficulty experienced by students in envisaging the given topic will be
eliminated. Participation will increase since the courses will become more
enjoyable. Retention increases and learning becomes easier.”
“Following this GeoGebra course, I have observed that it concretized a
great deal of information that I considered to be abstract. Undoubtedly, it is
evident that concrete information can be more easily assimilated compared
to abstract forms.”
• Lastly, there is a section in the Computer Assisted Mathematics Instruction Perception
Scale stating, “If you have something to add in regard to the issue, please elaborate”. In
addition to the questions, the analysis of which is given above, prospective mathematics
teachers made the statements given in the Table 8.