Tools to enhance math education: the Jasper series

E ducators have increasingly emphasized the importance of helping students improve their skills in reasoning, thinking, and communicating [1, 5, 6]. The National Science Board Commission on Pre-college Education contends that the "basics" for education must go beyond reading, writing, and ari thmetic and must include communicat ion, higher-level problem-solving skills, and scientific and technological literacy. In the domain of mathematics, a vision of the classroom is emerging in which students spend substantial amounts of time solving complex, meaningful problems, conduct ing investigations, discussing findings, and reflecting on their work [4]. While this vision is quite appealing, a major challenge for educators is to create situations that provide opportunities for this type of intellectual engagement . The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury is an a t tempt to help meet this challenge by providing rich contexts for mathematical thinking and problem solving about real-world situations. Consider the following classroom scenario: