A videogame as a tool to orchestrate productive mathematical discussions

We structure an educational activity with a videogame starting from the hypothesis that technological tools could support in collecting data on students’ achievements and designing mathematical wholeclass discussions. In this paper, we present and discuss an example from our case studies, with the aim of analysing the role played by the videogame in supporting productive discussion concerning relational thinking. We conducted a whole-class discussion, and we noticed that the videogame could be a valuable tool for structuring the discussion. Indeed, the log files allow us to follow students’ achievements and difficulties in solving tasks, and the dedicated web interface permits students to upload their responses and share them immediately.