Enhancing children understanding of mathematics with multisensory technology

Recent results from psychophysics and developmental psychology show that children do not integrate and use the same sensory modalities in the same way, but they rather have a preferential sensory channel to learn specific concepts. In schools, however, the visual channel is often the only one exploited for teaching, whereas the other channels are left to a marginal role. The weDRAW project, an ongoing European two-years project, explores the chance to create and evaluate new methodologies to teaching, grounded on multisensory technologies. In particular, the project targets a deeper understanding of arithmetic and geometry. A major novelty of such a new technology is that it is based on the renewed understanding of what communication between senses is and how it occurs during child development, that is, that specific sensory systems have specific roles for learning specific concepts. Neuroscientific prospectives suggest that it is possible to develop new teaching/learning channels, personalized for each student based on the child's sensory skills. This practice work consists of a demo simulating a set-up in a primary school, where children with any level of previous mathematical knowledge can try the technologies themselves. The demo includes full-body activities to "play" and "draw" arithmetical and geometrical concepts, such as playing a fraction using body rhythms and drawing shapes and symmetries.