Everybody Counts: Designing Tasks for TouchCounts

Abstract

TouchCounts is an open-ended multi-touch App, which provides unconventional opportunities for engagement with the concept of a number, counting, and number operations. We describe a series of tasks designed for use in TouchCounts, which take advantage of the affordances of this environment. We elaborate on various aspects of the tasks as related to their pragmatic and epistemic values. We discuss the learning potential of the tasks, compare TouchCount tasks with similar tasks performed with physical manipulatives and provide a few illustrative examples of children's engagement with the tasks.