A criptografia como uma ferramenta para o ensino da Matemática no ensino médio

Abstract

The current study is based on the investigation of the influence that the use of cryptography causes in the teaching-learning process of high school students. Cryptography brings with it relevant themes to give meaning to the mathematical concepts studied in high school, making connections with content from previous grades and addressing prerequisites that are essential to reduce their difficulties in the face of internal and external evaluations. In this sense, this study aims to verify the advances in relation to the contents of matrices and number theory treated with the classes. The research was developed with 25 students of the last year of high school in a state school, located in the city of Japeri - RJ and divided into seven classes of fifty minutes each. Initially, a brief history of the development of cryptography is presented, from its origin to the RSA system, and the basic mathematical foundations necessary to understand the proposed cryptographic processes. Then, three activities were applied with the class divided into groups in order to encrypt and decrypt messages. Based on the results obtained by comparing students' grades in internal and external evaluations applied before and after the work is done, it is possible to observe an improvement in class performance. Which demonstrates that, in fact, cryptography has the potential to be a good educational tool for teaching mathematics in high school and that is not an exclusive concept of spy films.