| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 數位科技設計學系(含玩具與遊戲設計碩士班) === 101 === Mathematics is one of the most important school subjects, but many children are
scared of it, and especially of the exercises. But practice in arithmetic skills is a vital
part of learning math well. This study describes a toy that was designed to encourage
children to enjoy the experience of learning basic arithmetic, such as simple addition and
subtraction. We chose four children, who had some room for improvement in their math
skills, and gave them the toys to use in the math class. We used case study methods and
collected data by observation of the subjects’ progress, as well as by the use of exams
and interviews. It was found that the use of the toys also encouraged the teacher to
devise more innovative learning activities which greatly improved the pupil’s
engagement in learning. The activities gave them more motivation to learn as well as
more opportunity for practice. The pupils who used this toy not only enjoyed their math
exercises more, but were also more attentive in class and more confident in their ability
to learn the subject. They slowly began, in a simple way, to understand the significance
of learning math and that the accumulation this basic knowledge was an important step
that simply had to be taken. Exam scores for the four subjects were also better than
before. Their ability to get the right answers improved as did their speed of progress,
although each child’s individual progress was different. In addition we prepared a
generalized, step by step, toy design procedure for teachers to make it easy for them to
make this kind of device for use in their own classrooms.
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