Desmos, Desmos, Desmos

Yesterday,  I attended 2 very good workshop.  Each workshop was 3.5 hours long, packed with awesome information, and we got to learn so much more about using Desmos.  I spent the morning learning more about using various Desmos activities, add pauses, and copy and edit some already done.

I knew the basics but I learned more about using the activities including how to pause it so students had to stop and listen or how to set it so students could only do part of the activity rather than rushing through.  We also learned the Polygraph activities which allow students to chat with each other as they play a type of twenty questions.  The great thing is they are designed so kids cannot ask questions like "Is it the upper left one?" because the arrangement is different on each screen.

In addition, we came out of the workshop with a list of links for list of activities including a list of activities for kindergarten to fifth grades.  There was also a Desmos scavenger hunt with activities to do ranging from beginner to advanced and most have a solution so if you get stuck trying to do it, you can pull up the solution to look at it.  I need the visual examples to help me see how the instructions fit together to make the final product.

In the afternoon, I got to do a workshop with Dan Meyer and it was awesome.  He began with a "What if" activity where he set up a list of numbers and then placed the variable representing the numbers into a coordinate system.  He asked up to make predictions for each of these before trying them on Desmos.  It was so open ended and promoted so much discussion.

Towards the end, he introduced us to the Desmos activity "Graphing Stories".  He had us divide up into groups of two or three people because this arrangement encourages more conversation that having each person doing it individually.  He showed a 15 second video and then asked us what things were qualitative and quantitive.  After some discussion, we were told to create a graph of the distance between his waist and the ground.  He let us know the time was over by pausing everyones screen.

He put a couple graphs up and asked us what was good about the graphs before asking us to identify areas or things that could be looked at to be revised.  We were all given the chance to revise our graphs before he stopped us to compare the original graphs with the revised graphs.  Once we had experience doing this, he asked us to create graphs for two out of four short 15 second videos. AT the end, he went through and shared one or two videos for each one.  We were running out of time, so he had us look at someone's graphs but it was awesome to see that graph against the one we made.

Throughout the hole workshop, Dan provided guidance and leadership without controlling exactly what we learned.  We did the figuring out and it was awesome.  I loved it and I am coming back with new ideas and tools to use in class.  I'll share more with you tomorrow.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great evening.