Favorite Techology Part 1: Desmos Teaching Activites

         I'm going to spend a few blog posts talking about some of my favorite technology sites and applications to use in my classroom, and my favorite features of each.

       Usually, I'm a "save the best for last" kind of gal, but for this I've decided to dive in with my favorite....Desmos!  I have written before about how much I love Desmos, but today I want to tell you about a few of my favorite features (and a little bit about how to use them!).

     There are tons of cool activities that have already been created to use on Desmos.  If you've never tried any, poke around and find one to try.  My favorites are MarblesSlides and Inequalities on the Number Line, but there are tons of great ones to pick from!

     Here are a few reasons that I love creating my own Desmos teaching activities:

1.  One of the things that I love about Desmos activities that I create myself is all of the different options that I have for what I can add to them.  Here is what you can add to your Desmos activities:

• graph
• table
• sketch
• media (picture or video)
• note  (you give information to students)
• input  (students input text or math equations)
• choice questions (choose between multiple choice, multiple mark, or explanation)
• card sort or marble slides activity

You can even combine more than one of these things on to a single screen.  For example, you could have a graph on the screen and an input box where students have to respond to a question about the graph.  

2.  Another thing that I love is that I can see all of my students work on one screen.  I can quickly see who has finished which slides.  I can click on a student's slide to get a closer view of their work.  This really allows me to give students real-time feedback!  Having everyone's answers in one place also allows for terrific use of student work to guide discussion, as I can quickly scroll through answers to find ones that I want to highlight in class.

Notice that Brahmagupta has made a mistake on the purple line.  This makes is so easy to find mistakes and talk with students.

3.  My class really likes to have me use the "Anonymize" feature, which assigns each student the name of a famous mathematician.  It's fun to hear, "Cool, I'm Katherine Johnson!" or to see kids looking up mathematicians to find out who they are.  I also like this feature because when I notice a problem, I can call out "Pythagoras, it looks like the second point on your graph is off.   Please double check it" and give kids feedback without embarrassing anyone.

4.  I like to set up my activities so that students get to see the answers of other students after they complete a slide.  I think it's really helpful for students to see what other classmates were thinking, and how they justified their thinking.

5.  Another feature that I really love about Desmos is the fact that you can carry forward a graph from one screen to another and kids could continue to work on a graph from one screen to another. 


If you're ready to create your own Desmos activity, go to https://teacher.desmos.com/ and choose  choose "Custom" on the menu on the left side of the page.  Then click "New Activity" in the upper right hand corner.    Then click "New Activity" in the upper right hand corner of the next screen.

This short video should give you some ideas of how to add things to your Desmos activity.

Good luck, and I hope you love creating these activities as much as I do!