TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTING THE EVOLUTION OF SPATIAL THINKING: A CASE STUDY WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Pre-service teachers, taking a method course to teach mathematics at elementary classroom, were exposed to explore various activities by using soma cubes. The research explores the participants' evolving ability of spatial visualization, which was very low at the beginning. They were struggling while drawing or constructing even very basic constructions. However, the improvements were accelerated as they integrated technological tools, StarBoard and SketchUp because of the flexibility and usability provided by these tools. The main corpus of data consists of participant own reflections on the pros and cons of integrating technology and how technology affected their visualization and spatial reasoning.