This article addresses and discusses meaning production for Cartesian graphs by high school students. In particular, it focuses on the role of technology in the emergency of students' understanding of distance versus time graphs, in which time is an axis, a component of the graph. Twenty-eight junior high school students were videotaped while engaged in an activity of sketching a Cartesian graph for a movement situation in three steps; step one- reading a story and using pencil and paper; step two- working with a graphic calculator and a CBR sensor; step three- revisiting the graph done on step one. A theoretical framework based on embodiment theory was used for analyzing students' meaning production and how they change their thinking about time representation during the activity. The results pointed out to a change in perception and in building a time-axis, turning what was first an abstract entity to a palpable one.
Cartesian graphs; language; meaning production; technology as prosthesis; embodiment theory
