Her thesis, titled ‘An Investigation into Students’ Understandings of Linear Relationships when using Dynamic Mathematical Software as an Exploration Tool’ investigated students’ understanding of Linear Relationship concepts using the dynamic software GeoGebra.

Mrs Aventi attempted to explain her thesis in layman’s terms.

“It's a study on students’ understanding … and what skills kids or students need to be able to do well with technology in the classroom,” Mrs Aventi said.

“Kids often don’t have time to figure out the inner workings of technology really well.”

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For the study, Mrs Aventi focused on year nine students from Marian Catholic College and introduced the program GeoGebra, which offers free online maths tools for graphing, geometry, 3D, and more.

The program was designed as part of a Masters and PhD thesis and is now being applied to schools, with Mrs Aventi and other teachers using GeoGebra in the classrooms at the college.

Mrs Aventi chose to work with year nine students as subjects for her thesis study because they are at the gap stage between junior and senior year mathematics learning.

“We used GeoGebra to see how kids’ understanding of linear relationships can be improved with the program.”

Mrs Aventi said the aim was to take something very easy that the students knew, and then to try and expand on that knowledge.

“We based it on the students’ learning and to gauge their understanding on how fast we could go in teaching,” she said.

She also looked at what skills the students needed to embrace this technology and see where their hurdles came from.

“The purpose was to identify developmental hurdles and issues that could be addressed by teachers in their teaching sequence.”

In her findings, Mrs Aventi discovered the technology in the program motivated students, particularly with the use of visual aids.

“The students quite enjoyed using the technology,” she said.

“They learnt without realising they were learning.”

She also found GeoGebra was a great tool for learning linear relationships, and deriving formulae.

“I takes a lot longer to get to a formula than it is to show a student – if you’re just showing them you’re just spoon-feeding them in a sense,” she said.

“It’s about getting the kids to think for themselves.”

Mrs Aventi celebrated the momentous occasion and achievement in Armidale, along with husband Simon, children Allira and Miranda, parents Jim and Nancy Zanotto and her supervisor, Associate Professor Pep Serow.

Mrs Aventi continues to work part-time at Marian Catholic College where she teaches Mathematics and Music and is the Liturgy Coordinator for the College.

GeoGebra is a free online tool available on their site.