“Professora, a gente pode usar o photomath?”: o lugar dos aplicativos nas aulas de matemática.

The discussion invoked in this paper is based on the premise that mobile apps will affect m athem atics teaching and learning whether or not the com m unities of m athem atics education researchers and teachers endorse their use. It is our belief that, instead of trying to prevent the inevitable or trying to isolate the classroom from technological tools that are widespread in other spheres of life, mathematics teachers should consider the ramifications of the use of these tools and form ulate ways in which they can become welcome additions to our classes. We believe that in the sam e way teachers can engage in responsible use of apps such as Photom ath, there is potential for students to do the same. We argue that, if the objective of our lessons is not to teach the execution of algorithms, but to teach students to pose relevant questions and to solve problems, apps can be used to perform algorithm or other secondary tasks. In this paper we present different ways described in the literature in which we as teachers can guide the use of apps with the objective or enhancing learning experiences, instead of ignoring their existence or trying to bar them from the classroom. Then we illustrate one of these uses with an episode that happened in a mathematics class in an undergraduate program. The reported experience seeks to relate our theoretical discussion to a practical situation that occurred in the classroom. We em phasize that the focus of this publication is the use of the PhotoMath and sim ilar sm artphone apps. The reported experience seeks to contextualize our theoretical discussion in a practical classroom occurrence.