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Desmos Saved Distance Learning

 


I have always loved teaching with technology.  My district rolled out Chromebooks in the Spring of the very first year that I taught.  So, I don't really know what it is like to teach without technology.

I have attended multiple Google Summits, as well as presented at a Google Summit and at a technology conference put on by my district.  In addition to those experiences, Twitter and Facebook have been some of my best resources for Professional Development.  That is how I stay up on what's new.  I was even the TTL (Team Technology Lead) for my school site, in which my duties included training and assisting teachers on my site with the implementation of technology in their classrooms.

So, what that means, is that I had already experimented with technology in the classroom before distance learning happened.  That helped me when it came to planning and implementing my synchronous and asynchronous curriculum. 

Prior to the 2020-21 school year, I would sometimes hear kids tell me, "I can't do math on the computer".  They would get frustrated with the use of technology in classroom.  This always confused me, because we were still doing math on paper, just typing it into the computer, or selecting the answer.  Whenever we did math on the computer, I always had kids get out paper as well. 

Then this crazy year just happened, and I told my kids Desmos is your paper now.  

I wanted them to have some consistency, and so most lessons that I taught were presented using the desmos activity builder. This helped them know what to expect, as well as know how to type the math into the computer.  It also gave them an opportunity to show work on the sketchpad.

However, even though most of my lessons were on the same site, that does not mean that my lessons were all the same.  There is such a wide variety of things that can be done with the Desmos activity builder.  I utilized multiple modalities to maximize the use of technology and actually enhance our lessons on a regular basis.

I had already been using the Open Up High School Mathematics curriculum, formerly known as Mathematics Vision Project, so I simply took the Tasks from that text and reimagined them on Desmos.

Due to distance learning, we were only able to have 2 scheduled synchronous lessons per week, and did not get through the entire curriculum.  However, I attached my collections of lessons that we were able to learn.  I also added some examples from those collections below. I hope you find things that are useful, or even things that spark your creativity of the many things that can be done with Desmos.

Math 2 1.4 TASK Rabbit Run


Math 2 1.5 TASK The Tortoise and the Hare


Math 2 2.7 TASK The X Factor



Here are the links to my collections on Desmos for:
Integrated Math 2


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