Des-blog

Parlez-vous français?

Maybe you speak French and maybe you don’t but thanks to a small collection of bilingual Des-users, those who do can use about 80 different activities at teacher.desmos.com. ¿Habla espanol? Our collection of Spanish translated activities is smaller but growing. Plus we have several in Dutch, and one each in Italian and Hebrew.

All you need to do is search Français, Español, Italiano, Nederlands, or עברית to find activities that some diligent user has put the time and effort into translating.

Would YOU like to be one of these diligent users? Get in touch! Dan coordinates this work—email him at dan@desmos.com (in English, please!) and he’ll let you know what it takes to get up and running.

A dedicated worldwide user base with the expertise to translate activities is what makes this week’s Friday Fave possible. C’est magnifique!

The Friday Fave is keeping it simple this week. One feature that makes certain situations just a bit more delightful.

Zooming in the Desmos graphing calculator has always been easy. Scroll wheels and track pads alike zoom your view in or out quickly and smoothly.

Recently, we introduced a little bit of magic to give you just a bit more control over your zooming. Hover your cursor over an axis, press SHIFT, click and drag.

Now you’re changing the scale on one axis at a time. A simple little upgrade to your zooming experience is this week’s Friday Fave.

Feedback comes in many forms. We can give feedback by evaluating a response as correct or incorrect in order to report a score. Alternatively, we can reflect back what we hear from another person, support them in considering if that is what they really mean, and allow them to make revisions until what they are trying to communicate is consistent with how it is being received.

In Land the Plane, students see that their slope is incorrect if the plane doesn’t land on the runway. They can refine their thinking in an effort to be successful - and to learn how to compute the slope of a line.

In Match my Parabola, Students see the parabola that corresponds to an equation they submit. Students are empowered to use this feedback to modify their equation, and move on when they are satisfied, resulting in increased student learning and motivation.

In Laser Challenge, students see the angles they selected cause a laser and mirror to animate to get feedback on the accuracy of their predictions. Through revisions, students develop their intuition for angle measures and properties of reflections.

Being told an answer hinders motivation and discourages revision. It implies that someone else already knows the answer and that your thinking is insufficient.

Being shown what you’re saying without judgment supports thinking more deeply. It can make the goal feel attainable which encourages learning through revision. That’s why interpretive feedback is this week’s Friday Fave.