| The game is a universal activity that has been present in all cultures and has been very important development of mathematics. It is necessary to recognize its value as a means to learn and develop skills. Here's why. Alan Bishop identifies the game as one of the six activities of the cultural environment that drive the development of mathematical ideas. The other five are counting, measuring, locating, designing and explain. According to him, the game promotes communication skills, poses challenges, creates uncertainty and develops mathematical reasoning. At the same time, involves defining rules, rhythms and harmonies, and lets you create an order. Research on some games has led to the creation of important mathematical theories. Recall that after solving a riddle, Leonhard Euler sat the foundations of modern and useful graph theory, that gambling began the study of probability, and that the famous mathematician John Nash (whose life was recreated in the movie A beautifull mind ) received Nobel prize for achievements in the study of noncooperative games. Therefore not surprising popularity mathematical interest showed by the study of puzzles, paradoxes, strategy games and other recreational events. class Playing
In the classroom, the duly elected and dosed games are a new learning opportunity, and create an emotional and affective context for the development of mathematical ideas. With them is promoted mathematical reasoning in a natural and motivating, subtly takes students to investigate new techniques to solve problems, and developing these specific skills in strategic thinking, planning, decision making, estimation and demonstration. Also, when students play, low anxiety level, communication flows, the interest grows and the concentration remains. Besides all this, the teacher facilitates playful interaction the task of measuring the degree of understanding of concepts, the ability to implement certain knowledge, the ability to communicate ideas and arguments put forward. As we see, at every educational level games can advantageously replace some routine work for more active learning processes. Hence the value of including them in a consistent math program. What games use? When and how? an appropriate choice of games is a resource that every teacher must handle. Some countries have built playgrounds in schools or clubs of Mathematics, where students play and researcher from carefully selected materials. Periodically you can incorporate some game related to the topic you are trying to strengthen the capabilities and the concepts, and to assess student learning. The proposed classification can help make a proper selection of games for teaching: | CLASS | TYPE | DESCRIPTION | | EDUCATIONAL GAMES | preinstruccionales Games | Activate prior knowledge, paving the way to the concept that will work. | | instructional Games | Present concepts from different perspectives and help the transition from concrete to abstract. Generally these games use a combination of representations (pictorial, concrete, symbolic). | | postinstruccionales Games | Raised to acquire skills or enhancing a concept, often largely symbolic, and take advantage of everything the student learned to put it into practice creative and integrated way. | | STRATEGY GAMES | pure strategy games | not have elements of chance. The game is set in a finite number of moves. At all times the players have complete information about the state of the game. Games such as chess, mancala and neem are examples of them. | | Mixed Game | strategies combine elements of chance. For example, backgammon, ludo arithmetic, among others. | | ENIGMAS | Mathematical Puzzles | situations which promotes interest in presenting set aside mysterious or enigmatic. Can be arithmetic, logical, geometric, or graph. | | mechanical puzzle | math-based challenges to a concrete support. Examples are the tangram, the Tower of Hanoi, the cube soma. | | lateral thinking problems | Stories that have an apparently absurd, but from novel viewpoints have logical sense. | | Matemagia | games math-based magic. | | Fallacies | false propositions down after a deductive chain of steps apparently justified. | | The strength in currently is very hard work and research alone. Just look at the research journals to prove that, unlike what happened in the past, most major works are carried out by a multidisciplinary group of scholars who share their knowledge. few years ago, the math classes were far from this kind of work. Were conducted in absolute silence, with each student perfectly located in the folder and without opportunity to discuss their ideas and exchange experiences. Today, however, most experts recommend and promote the use of cooperative learning, since this is more efficient and productive than individual work. Here are some of the reasons: 1. Group work decreases the size of the class. If this were thirty students, and these are organized into groups of five, the class is reduced to six groups: when one hand is lifted interested know that there are five waiting for guidance. 2. Through verbalization, students learn not only how to probing questions, but also to explain their own reasoning processes. Many students who could never raise a question in front of forty people are motivated, and decided to ask within their group. 3. Group work promotes creative thinking, and makes each student feel safe to use trial and error methods. 4. The open and supportive environment greatly reduces anxiety. 5. students and the teacher quickly enter a feedback process. Thus, the teacher also becomes an apprentice of his own pedagogy. | | For more information | - Dialnet . Website within the University of La Rioja which houses articles, research and information about Professor Alan Bishop.
http://dialnet.unirioja.es | |
and 
is equivalent to the sum of the first 
odd natural numbers. 
