The Technological Revolution and the Reform of School Mathematics

Technology and technology-intensive mathematics curricula are catalysts for the mathematics education reform movement. Students can understand mathematics more deeply when they assume responsibility for their own learning as they engage in and reflect on authentic mathematical activity. Analyzing technology in mathematics classrooms as cognitive technologies with differing degrees of transparency and different abilities to externalize representations, viewing technology used to enhance computational skills as amplifiers, and viewing technology used to encourage students to investigate mathematical phenomena and real-world situations as reorganizers, I evaluate the ways in which empirical research supports this vision or calls it into question.