Cabri as a cognitive tool- Part 1

A cognitive tool? The main aim of this paper is to analyse the role of Cabri-Geometre1 (Baulac, Bellemain & Laborde, 1988) as a cognitive tool in the teaching and learning of mathematics. In the recent literature on the role of ICT in education computers are seen as tools to develop an original and independent thinking: Computers are cognitive tools 'as they serve to aid students in their own constructive thinking, allowing them to transcend their cognitive limitations and engage in cognitive operations they would not have been capable of otherwise ' (Pea, 1987). Following this approach to the use of technology in the mathematics classroom, Cabri is seen as a support for learners to transcend cognitive limitations and to construct a new relation to knowledge. This paper gives an outline of one of two separate but related PhD projects, currently carried out at the University of Bristol, taking two different perspectives to the same central issue: the first project focuses on the role played by the student as learner/user, while the second one looks at the teacher as user and therefore producer of knowledge through the software environment. Proof as a process