Criptografia RSA no ensino médio: um recurso de motivação e aprendizagem

Abstract

The demotivation of students in the last grade of high school, after carrying out the selection evaluations for undergraduate courses, is experienced in many Brazilian schools. Due to this fact, this dissertation sought to create a didactic sequence that would stimulate the student in his learning. We are currently experiencing a technological evolution in our relations with the world and, going on this way, there has been an increase in the search for security of data and information exchanged on the Internet. This dissertation has as its theme RSA Cryptography (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) and the objective of investigating and working on the mathematical elements, which are necessary in the development of RSA Cryptography algorithms, in order to instigate the curiosity and interest of students in going deeper into Mathematics. Eight didactic interventions were planned for the presentation of the theme and the development of algorithms for encoding and decoding messages. The results of the analysis of the interventions pointed out that the students were interested in the theme and in the development of the algorithms and were able to successfully carry out the proposed activities (about encoding and decoding messages). We conclude that this didactic sequence stimulated the students’ interest in Mathematics classes and provided moments of mathematical studies that potentiated Teaching and Learning in the classroom.