Desmos Explorations

If you haven’t seen these fantastic interactive desmos labs, you need to know they exist… and so do your students!  I plan to use Des-man this week (and I had more than a little bit of fun making my first Des-man too).

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 10.17.27 PM

 

 

 

 

 

This is great time of year to present students with a highly-engaging, customizable, high-tech task.  Well, any time of year is good for that, but this is a PARTICULARLY good time to prevent that end-of-the-year “check out” to which students (and unfortunately teachers) tend to default.  Yes, the sun is shining, and some have even begun to count down the days of school still remaining, but here’s desmos to the rescue.

Follow up:

My algebra students thoroughly enjoyed Des-Man.  You know it’s a “Nguyen” when the bell rings and all the students say, “Awwwww!” and don’t want to quit the task.  I got e-mails from students throughout the day, long after they had left my class, sharing additionally created Des-Men.  One student created a Des-Cat!  Kids were literally asking permission – “Can I make another one?” – Love it.

The day we used Des-Man in class, some students were away on a field trip.  Best quote of the day was a student who said he “felt bad” for the kids who were on the field trip because they were missing out on Des-Man…

Say what?!?!  REWIND…!  Press PLAY!  Read THAT again and internalize that!  This student was being completely sincere!!!

A side note: Each student-created Des-Man generates its own unique URL.  I wish I would have asked each of my students to share their URLs with me so that I could embed them all in a ThingLink.  On the other hand, I notice that the URLs to Des-Men can be edited by anyone, so perhaps screenshots would be preferable over links.  Not sure on that one.

I shared my own Des-Man-meets-Slope-Guy URL here – just click the last image below to see it on desmos.com.  If he’s been tinkered with… it wasn’t me! 😉

P.S. Confirmation that Desmos URLs lead to images that indeed are editable by anyone.  Alas, my Slope-Guy Des-Man only exists in the screenshot below.

imageDes-Man Classphoto 1

Screen Shot 2014-05-09 at 2.20.58 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One Response to Desmos Explorations

  1. Thanks for sharing, Cathy. Looks like we have similar wish lists for Desmos features.

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