Development of an instrument to assess early number concept development in four South African languages

A recently published interview-based test, known by its partly German acronym, MARKO-D SA, is introduced in this article by way of a narrative of its development through various cycles of research. The 48-item test, in 4 South African languages, captures number concept development of children in the 6 to 8-year age group. The authors present their argument for the South African versioning and translation of the test for this country, where there is a dearth of suitable assessment instruments for gauging young children’s mathematical concept development. We also present the findings of the research that was conducted to standardise and norm the local version of the test, along with our reasoning about the theoretical strength of the conceptual model that undergirds the test.

An Efficient QR Methodology for Authentication of Reviews in Hospitality Sector

Consumer-created reviews of services are a critical driver of everyday decision-making. A service that has a higher average review or rating usually gets picked against a similar service with less favourable reviews. Customer feedbacks are useful for restaurants in order for them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and therefore generate ideas to enhance their services. Social media applications already provide us with an option of sharing our reviews which helps a new visitor to know the place in advance, but it is really hard to get a holistic view of the restaurant mainly due to the fact that almost anyone can submit a review regardless of whether they have actually visited the restaurant or not. Some mischievous people deliberately put-up misleading reviews about a particular restaurant due to which other people get a bad image of that restaurant, thus bringing down the business. This paper aims to address all these concerns specifically. The objective was to build an interface that would prevent malicious users uploading deceptive reviews about a restaurant. Two techniques namely Bill Number Concept and QR Code Concept were proposed to build the required interface. Sentiment Analysis was then used to convert these reviews into ratings. The interface created using the mentioned techniques enabled only verified users to submit their reviews thereby successfully preventing malicious users from submitting a review. Keywords: feedback, reviews, bill number, QR code, sentiment analysis

The Prehistory of Number Concept

Carey leaves unaddressed an important evolutionary puzzle: In the absence of a numeral list, how could a concept of natural number ever have arisen in the first place? Here we suggest that the initial development of natural number must have bootstrapped on a material culture scaffold of some sort, and illustrate how this might have occurred using strings of beads.

The Archaeology of Number Concept and Its Implications for the Evolution of Language

This chapter examines the evolution of number concept, via the ability to conceive of and use other representations of quantity. It approaches the evolution of number concept via the development of the concept in children. It finds that the child's acquisition of the concept leans heavily on the language scaffold of labelling. It considers the notion that the key in the child's construction of the number concept is the memorized set of words that constitutes the numeral list. This, in turn, raises the possibility that the presence of number concept might correlate with, and consequently be evidence for, the presence of language, provided that the presence of number in deep prehistory could be documented. It is possible that the evolutionary development of an integer concept may differ from its development in children. Hence, the chapter turns to the ethnographic and archaeological records for evidence about its evolutionary development.

Measuring toddlers non-symbolic number processing

Much research has investigated children’s non-symbolic number processing and its relation to mathematical ability. However, surprisingly few studies have investigated performance in 18-36 month-olds, where symbolic number concepts begin to emerge, and the extent results indicate poor performance. We tested 74 2 - 3.5 year-olds recruited from two sites (Ulster and Uppsala). They completed a novel dot-comparison task where children were shown, but not verbally instructed, how pushing a more numerous array resulted in reward and a Give-N task. Overall, participants performed above chance on the dot comparison task, indicating that non-symbolic number processing skills can be measured in toddlers without verbal instructions. We found no relation between performance on the non-symbolic number processing task and knower-level. Our results warrant two conclusions. First, verbal instructions involving the concept of more are not necessary to measure non-symbolic number processing skills in young children. Second, the development of a symbolic number concept seems independent of the development of non-symbolic comparison skills but may become artificially related when researchers use quantifiers such as “more” to measure the former.

Research on the Application of Augmented Reality Technology into the Educational Activities of Kindergarten’s Number Concept

Augmented Reality (AR) is different from virtual reality (VR). It is an emerging technology that does not emphasize the creation of virtual feelings through virtual objects, but focuses on combining virtual objects with real environments. This article starts from the connotation interpretation and characteristic analysis of augmented reality technology, and examines the current kindergarten number concept education activities, and finds that there are the following problems in kindergarten number concept education activities: insufficient creation of mathematics environment, single learning methods for children, and lack of effective learning among children interactive. Combining the characteristics and functions of augmented reality technology, we propose optimization strategies for optimizing kindergarten math concept education activities, respectively creating a unity of “form” and “body” for the environment, rich game experience and dialogue-creating-meaning construction of children’s mathematics cognition.

The Effect of Make a Match Learning Models and Cognitive Ability to Recognize the Concept of Number

This study aims to investigate: (1) the difference of ability to recognize the concept of numbers between children taught by Make a Match learning model based on creativity and children taught by Make a Match learning model; (2) the difference of ability to recognize the concept of numbers between children who have high cognitive abilities and low cognitive abilities, and (3) the interaction between Make a Match learning model with children's cognitive abilities on the ability to recognize concepts. The sample in this study is 28 children in class B1 for the experimental class who are taught by Make a Match based on creativity and for the control class, class B2 consisted of 28 children who were taught by Make a Match. They are 5-6 years old children at Raudhatul Athfal Mutiara Bunda Banda Aceh. The results show that: (1) The ability of children who taught by Make a Match learning model based on creativity is 44.96, it is higher than children who taught by Make A Match learning, it is 34.64, (2) The ability to recognize the number concept of children who have high cognitive abilities obtained an average value of = 46.89, while children who have low cognitive abilities obtained an average value of = 33.21, and (3) The results show that there was no significant interaction between the use of learning and children's cognitive abilities (high and low) in influencing the ability to recognize the concept of numbers.

Framework for Evaluating Math Educational Materials for Constructing Early Number Concept

Teaching and learning of mathematics, due to their abstract nature, are enhanced, especially at an early age, using educational materials. The wide variety of the available math’s educational materials requires teachers to evaluate them in order to incorporate them to their teaching practice. Contributing to this field, the purpose of this paper is dual. Firstly, it intends on defining the factors that could be included in a framework for evaluation of math educational material. Secondly, it aims on using this framework to evaluate specific educational materials that are used for the construction of early number concept. The results showed that the factors that could compose a framework of evaluating math educational materials could be related with 1. Evaluation of the material itself, independently of its context of use, 2. Evaluation of the material in the social context of its use, as well as 3. Evaluation of materials’ acceptability to the general educational community. From the evaluation of specific educational materials that are used for the construction of early number concept it seemed that no material itself could be considered, as suitable for teaching all the individual constructs of the number concept in early years’ mathematics, according to the developed framework.