Distance Mathematics Lessons in Primary School: Services for Creating Interactive Exercises

Abstract

The article is devoted to the research of the issue of using online services LearningApps, Google Classroom, Classtime, Classdojo for organizing distance learning of mathematics in primary school. According to the results of the scientific literature analysis, which are confirmed by the data of 'teachers' questionnaires, these services are the most common among primary school teachers in Ukraine. At the same time, working in these online services requires from the teacher a certain level of ICT competence, knowledge and the ability to apply algorithms for creating interactive exercises in individual templates and in certain services. Based on the analysis of the possibilities of these services for the creation of different types of mathematical tasks, the authors developed a content module, the purpose of which is to train future primary school teachers for creating interactive exercises in mathematics. The paper presents the results of experimental work with students majoring in 013 'Primary Education' of the South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushynsky (Odesa, Ukraine) and Izmail State University of Humanities (Izmail, Ukraine). Having studied the module, 32% of students showed a high level, 49% -sufficient, 16% -intermediate, and only 3% low level of skills in working with the services LearningApps, Google Classroom, Classtime, Classdojo.

E-learning & Artificial Intelligence

“…3. as to presenting educational content on a virtual whiteboard, 50% of primary school teachers know that they can use the Padlet service, while 4% of teachers preferred Lino.it. Nevertheless, only 16% of teachers among the 50% who are aware of this service use the Padlet virtual whiteboard in their work, and only 2% of teachers among the 4% use Lino.it (Skvortsova, & Britskan, 2021). The percentage of primary school teachers aware of the Padlet virtual board is notably lower in our survey than in a study by Skvortsova, Ishchenko, Halitsan and Haievets (2022), which reported 55.2% awareness among mathematics and primary school teachers, compared to 16% in our survey.…”

“…In the same academic year, in the fall of 2020, we conducted an online survey of primary school teachers regarding their use of online services (Skvortsova, & Britskan, 2021). Summarizing the results, we reached the following conclusions: 1. the LearningApps service is the most popular for creating interactive exercises, with 82% of teachers being aware of it.…”

“…In 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic, our data indicated that 98% of teachers already worked with scientific and methodical literature available on the Internet, and 73% of teachers attended Internet webinars; (Skvortsova, Britskan, & Haievets, 2020). Therefore, even before the introduction of distance learning, Ukrainian teachers were widely using ICT quite widely in their professional activities.…”

“…In 2019, while 90% of teachers considered it appropriate to use educational games, 70% opted for multimedia presentations, 80% preferred interactive exercises, 70% found value in educational videos and audio recordings, 80% in educational programs, 60% in tests and quizzes. It is important to highlight that, despite their lower ICT competence, Ukrainian teachers still valued interactive games, but had mainly low level of ICT competence (Skvortsova, Britskan, 2019), then in February 2020, 84% of teachers indicated that they independently work on improving their ICT skills, and even before the introduction of distance learning, 20% of respondents used platforms for creating electronic magazines and diaries, only 24% -had experience of independent creation of educational and game content using Internet resources, and the most popular among teachers were online services LearningApps and Google Forms (Skvortsova, & Britskan, 2021). It is important that 98% of primary school teachers in Ukraine used ICT to conduct lessons even before the Covid-19 pandemic.…”

“…However, many teachers lack the skills to work with online services for creating educational and game content (Skvortsova, Ishchenko, Britskan, 2020). Nevertheless, there is a clear understanding among these teachers of the role of ICT in improving the effectiveness of the educational process (Skvortsova, Britskan, 2019;Skvortsova, Ishchenko, Britskan, 2020;Skvortsova, Britskan, & Haievets, 2020). Respondents have also identified constraints unrelated to the education system, such as network congestion, students' limited internet access, unprepared parents, and inadequate technical support and equipment at home, etc.…”