The first question to consider is why is there a need for such a network project? As the research has shown, people learning mathematics have difficulty transferring school-math to real-world situations. This network project permits the real-world to be brought into the classroom. But, this begs the question, why do the project on the Web? Careful consideration was given to this issue. The World Wide Web was selected because it is a good medium in which teachers and students can participate in creating their own learning environments. There is an ease of publication on the Internet. The learning curve for setting up Web pages is fairly low given proper guidance, the availability of software, and some motivation. The Internet is also a cost-effective medium. Producing a CD-ROM instead of Web pages was one alternative idea. However, because it was my intention to develop a sustainable model for the school, lack of CD-ROM burners and the fact that CDÕs cannot be easily updated did not seem to make this a viable alternative. Moreover, the Internet is a medium that supports a collaborative workspace and that supports the simultaneous display of multiple media that could then be interrelated.
One of the most obvious contributions this research has is how can digital video be used so that it is a good learning tool? As technology continues to infiltrate the classroom, digital video is becoming more prevalent. And yet, we know very little about its effectiveness as a learning tool. There is no denying that it is engaging and motivating for the students, but aside from that, what impact it has on learning has not been fully assessed. What will be a key contribution of this research would be to help determine if digital video is a good tool to help situate real-world events within the classroom walls. Furthermore, the data collected and analyzed in this study will help shed more light on the issue of visual literacy. Do we need to help student become more visually literate? Moreover, is there a distinction between knowledge comprehension and visual literacy. That is, did the students well because they were visually literate and could relate better to the digital video as a component or because they had a better conceptual understanding of the mathematical principles? If as the NCTM standards suggest that students will become more quantitatively literate, how much of that is implicit in being visually literate?
Yet, a second obvious implication would be that this research may pinpoint a better way to promote transference of mathematical concepts into real-world situations. This might offer a way for students to learn within the school walls, but not be limited by the boundaries of school-math.
Another contribution that may come out of this research is a documentation of what is necessary to incorporate network technologies and digital video into the curriculum. Some tangent effort I would hope to follow-up on in the future is outlining what it takes to have such technologies as an integral part of the curriculum.
In essence, by bringing insight to the following five questions, NetMath has the potential to impact not only math classrooms, but other subject areas as well.