Diagrams and tool use: Making a circle with WiiGraph

Using Châtelet’s perspective on the gesture/diagram interplay, we aim to contribute to the current discussion on the role of technology showing influences of tool use on some grade 9 students’ diagrammatic activity. The students have been engaged in graphing motion experiences in the context of a teaching experiment with WiiGraph, a software application modelling the movement of two controllers of the game console Nintendo Wii. In particular, we focus on the activity of making a circle and the circle emerging as a gradient of speeds and directions out of students’ movements. Telling the story from the point of view of the diagram, we focus on the new dimensions and movements that arise from, within and about the working surface, as dynamic sources and sites of mathematical thinking.