ABSTRACT
Richard Noss (2001) suggested that what is natural to express and how one might do so both may change as a function of the expressive tools available to a culture at a given time. This view of the power of tools and media underlies much of the enthusiasm in mathematics education for technological tools. Perhaps technology might upset the hierarchies of prerequisite skills that often seem to dictate the practice of mathematics in schools. Perhaps technology might aid teachers in making accessible to learners’ powerful mathematical ideas in a different sequence and rate than has been traditionally deemed feasible (enthusiasts of such views like Papert, 1996 or Schwartz, 1999, differ often about which practices of schooling they imagine technology will up-end).
