Des-blog

Desmos is in full effect at #NCTMAnnual and we’re announcing the release of three major new features.

Transformations in Geometry

We continue to upgrade our Geometry tool. First constructions. Now transformations. You’re going to love how easy it is to explore congruency or generate geometric art.

Computation Layer

For the last year, Desmos has been building activities using a scripting language called Computation Layer. Computation Layer allows us to ask students questions on one screen, then give interesting feedback on their answers on another. It allows us to ask students for a sketch here, then render the sketch as an animation over there.

We spent a large part of the last quarter getting the documentation of those features in great shape, creating a support community around the language, and making the building experience as smooth as we can. It’s now available to you.

Activate it in labs. Start playing with basic connections between components. Ask questions. Build something amazing.

Trivia

Last night, one hundred attendees showed up for the Best Dang Happy Hour & Trivia Contest anywhere at NCTM. For the first time, we ran the trivia contest through our Activity Builder which allowed us to ask more interesting questions in more interesting ways and to be able to hook you all up the trivia questions today.

Check ‘em out and many congrats to Leigh’s Lemmas for their triumphant finish.

Which Is Steepest? is neither big nor splashy, but plays a very important role. In a tight seven screens, this activity takes from gut instincts about slope to probing the consequences of the formal definition.

Which segment is steepest?

How can you check?

Make a segment with in-between steepness

What might a student who thinks the blue segment below is steeper be thinking?

Is zero steepness a thing? What about infinite steepness?

All of the big, important, introductory questions about slopes of graphs surface for classroom discussion in seven short screens. That’s why Which Is Steepest? is this week’s Friday Fave.

And while you’re thinking about slope, have a look at these other great activities, too.

Land the Plane

Slanty Hills

Investigating Rates of Change

The Fave is in a calculator mood, and will keep this brief.

The making of movable points used to be quite mysterious, but no longer. This is because of the new “Drag” toggle. Click and hold as though you were going to change the color, and you’ll see the option to drag your point around.

You can set things to drag only vertically, only horizontally, or both. It works whether you originally specified your points numerically or with sliders.

More control over movable points is this week’s Friday Fave. Short and sweet and with a million uses.