Capturing ‘time’: characteristics of students’ written discourse on dynagraphs

We study high school students’ written discourse about an experience in a dynamic interactive digital environment in which functions were represented in one dimension, as dynagraphs. In a dynagraph of a real function one variable can be acted upon while the other varies as a consequence of the movement induced on the independent variable. Students were asked to write about their experience with the dynagraphs, and their written productions were collected and analyzed using a classification, that emerged a posteriori, in “snapshots, live-photos and scenes”. This classification is presented as a tool of analysis that allows to put discourse about dynagraphs in relation with discourse about functions. Examples of excerpts analyzed through this tool are given.