Using Google SketchUp to Develop Students’ Experiencesof Dimension in Geometry

Abstract

Dimension is a powerful mathematical construct that is rarely taught or researched explicitly. The study reported on here explored how the software Google SketchUp can facilitate students' experiences of dimension. Clinical interviews based on carefully designed tasks were conducted with 10-year-old students. This article offers evidence from the data on how the task setting, including SketchUp's dimensional tools identified in the software, prompted the construction of ideas about dimension. More specifically, children expressed intuitive ideas about an object/space's freedom to move within a space/object of higher dimension and its capacity to house other objects/spaces of lower dimension. In our study, we aimed to create new ways through which young children might experience the mathematical notion of dimension. We show how children as young as 10 years of age were able to work creatively and imaginatively in a three-dimensional (rendered in 2-D) computer-based drawing environment. We analyse the properties of the tools and tasks within that environment that seemed to trigger novel expressions of dimension. First, though, we need to consider how dimension is encountered informally in everyday settings and formally in scientific ones.