I am happy to tell you about this device as the "Commonwealth Association of Sc, Tech, and Math Educators" has awarded it a commendation for the year 2004.
While conducting workshops for teachers on teaching mathematics, I have often heard teachers complaining that they find it very difficult to teach subtractions, even simple subtractions. I have personally experienced how teaching a simple operation of "addition with carry" to a small child makes one sweat. The research conducted across the world to understand the difficulties underlying teaching/learning mathematics has revealed that "place value" is the most difficult concept for children to grasp. It is well known that all the basic arithmetic operations rest on the concept of place value. Hence, special efforts are required to make the concept of place value abundantly clear to the children. Teaching place value will make their understanding of higher-level concepts in mathematics certain and easy.
There are readymade devices available in the market for teaching place value. However, they expect children to believe in whatever the authority, their teachers, tell them. If a teacher shows a cube and tells them that "this is a hundred," they have to accept it blindly. If a teacher shows a blue chip and tells them that "Remember, this blue chip is a thousand," they have to take the teacher's word. No appeal!
Furthermore, these objects, like the blue chip, do not directly facilitate the "carry" or "borrow" operation to find out the answer for addition or subtraction. Those lucky, who are able to accept the idea of "one object means 100 objects or 10 objects," keep on progressing in mathematics; and those who are unlucky start suffering in mathematics. Also, whatever the teacher shows in the class does not get directly reflected in the written work on the chalkboard. Therefore, I decided to design a mathematical device, which will enable representation of numbers exactly the way we speak it.
Suppose I want to represent a number, "Two hundred thirty-five." The device should show this number as: two big bunches, each having a hundred objects; three bunches, each having ten objects; and a separate bunch of five objects.
The device I expected should allow representation of this number the way we write it. Thus, I must have facility to show two hundred objects in the left column, next to it I will have thirty objects and in the right hand column I can have five objects. Moreover, I wanted a device which will enable representation of two numbers at a time. Facility of this type will enable comparison, addition and subtraction of two numbers.
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