Learning Elementary Number Theory with the World Wide Web:
A Design of a Homepage on the Internet

Yiu-Kwong Man, Yui-Kin Ng and King-Shun Leung
Department of Mathematics,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong.
ykman@math.ied.edu.hk; ykng@math.ied.edu.hk; ksleung@math.ied.edu.hk

ABSTRACT

The use of the Internet for teaching and learning purposes has received a lot of attention over recent years. With the popularity and growth of the World Wide Web (WWW) for delivering courseware, many Multimedia Self-Learning resources have begun to appear. This paper reports the work-in-progress of the design and implementation of a Self-Learning and Chinese-Interface Homepage on ˇ§Elementary Number Theoryˇ¨ in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. It aims at providing the first experience for the pre-service teachers in our Two Year Full-time Certificate of Education (Primary) Program to the understanding of basic number theory through self- learning on the Internet. The topics chosen include:

The paper also describes the test used in our courseware to evaluate the effect of using multimedia as a teaching aid both quantitatively and qualitatively. The feedback from the students will be of vital importance to modify the presentation as well as to see the long term and short term benefits and limitations of such mode of leaning.

Illustration of Some Screen Dumps


Fig. 1: Screen showing the introduction of a topic called ˇ§Divisibilityˇ¨


Fig. 2: Screen showing a teacher asking a motivation question.


Fig. 3: Screen showing a student's answer in a simulated classroom.