From the area to the primitives: can the new technologies help the students in the construction of the meaning of mathematical objects?

One of the challenges of mathematics teaching in secondary school is to find a didactic practice that enables the students to approach consciously not easy subjects from a theoretical point of view, but at the same time useful to applications outside the mathematical field, for instance key concepts of calculus. Mediation of technology can play a major role to achieve this aim. In this paper we are going to examine a didactic activity, developed with the help of a graphic-symbolic calculator, concerning the introduction of the concept of integral