Des-blog

This week Desmos fellow Anna Scholl asked us where our inspiration comes from when building Desmos graphs and activities. The Desmos fellows shared their sources of inspiration as well as activities and graphs to help inspire others.

Like many others, Jenn Vadnais shared that “My inspiration often stems from need. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

While most of our group was inspired to create based on a need to help students learn, several of us were inspired by our own need to learn and grow, the need to figure out how things work, and interest in general. Several of the Desmos Fellows pointed to our Potluck activities as a source of inspiration as well as activities and graphs posted on Twitter and in our internal chat channel. Suzanne von Oy shared that she generally makes graphs just for fun, finding inspiration from websites, tweets, and even requests from coworkers and students such as the graph below.

Bob Lochel shares that “What inspires me most when creating activities is thinking deeply about the path a student will take during an activity - I want there to be a clear thread weaving through, but I don’t want students to encounter any brick walls.” Our group was similarly inspired by this need for connecting ideas and supporting students in their thinking. Read our list below of student needs that inspire our activity creation.

• The need to visualize. Patty Stephens built this graph to help her students visualize a 3-Act task called Frosted Cube Cake.
  

• The need to play and explore. Jade White finds that her students are more active in discussions with their partner when they are working through an activity. Including activity screens where students can explore a math concept can increase discussion and student questioning as well.
  
• The need to discuss and make sense of mathematics. Allison Krasnow has been choosing problems from her curriculum’s exit tickets and using those to build quick error analysis activities. After discussing both correct and incorrect ways of thinking, students are invited to improve their initial responses.
  

• The need to reflect. Paul Jorgens asked his students to spend time noticing how this set of class generated equations for the screen above were the same and different. “We wondered if they drew the same graph. Groups used their understanding of reciprocals, division and negative exponents in the process of arguing whether they were the same (or not).”

• The need for feedback. Nerissa Gerodias appreciates activities that help students see their misunderstanding immediately. She hopes that over time this feedback leads to both increased understanding as well as curiosity that will inspire students to explore on their own and see the beauty in mathematics.
  

What inspires you in your Desmos creations? Let us know on Twitter @desmos.

With Earth Day, the March for Science and the National Math Festival all descending on our nation’s capital this weekend, the Friday Fave turns its attention to analysis of the world we live in.

That means modeling. And one of the Fave’s Fave modeling lessons right now is Charge!

What is the relationship between time spent charging your phone and its percent charged? Can you use this relationship to predict how long it will take to fully charge your phone? Are piecewise-defined functions just a cute trick mathematicians play, or are they useful for describing actual phenomena?

These questions and more are in play in this week’s Friday Fave: Charge!

And while the Fave is in a modeling mood, here are three additional gems. Enjoy!

400-Meter Modeling

Card Sort: Modeling

Mocha Modeling

This week we asked the Desmos fellows to discuss ways to give participants a voice in workshops. The responses included a variety of strategies that the fellows had experienced success with, either as a workshop participant or as a presenter. The two main areas of focus had to do with how a workshop is differentiated to meet the needs of participants, and the strategies that the presenter can use to make participants active contributors to the session.

Differentiation

Several of the fellows mentioned that the most valuable professional learning experiences for them allowed them some choice in what they would explore. For example, Glenn Waddell has used Desmos Bingo in workshops to differentiate the learning experience for beginning and more advanced users of the Desmos calculator.

Patty Stephens attended a Google workshop in which the presenter gave an overview of three Google add-ons, then participants chose one to explore in-depth. This sort of exploration also gives teachers the time and space to consider how the learning applies to their own classroom.

Allison Krasnow and Jenn Vadnais appreciate differentiation and time to explore in a workshop, though they encouraged our group to be intentional with closure. Allison has struggled with bringing participants back together after exploration time to discuss the big ideas and learning that are relevant to the entire group. One idea to help with closure is to have a whole group share-out on take-aways and next steps, though Jenn shared that she has had mixed success with this strategy. “The successes occurred when there was a high level of trust in the room. The participants knew and respected each other. When presenting at a conference, participants were more comfortable talking in small groups than sharing whole group.”

Strategies

Jenn’s point reminds us that the strategies that presenters use can have a big impact on whether or not participants feel heard and whether or not they feel like their ideas are valued. Trust and feeling safe are also key, and our group had many ideas for how to build a safe space, even in a short amount of time.

• Tony Riehl has used a shared Google Doc with the agenda and prompts for participants to encourage questions and dialogue with the other participants. He’s found this to be helpful both as a presenter and as a participant in workshops.
• Paul Jorgens has appreciated Desmos workshops in which the presenter begins with a question to help gauge the experience level of the room and then records thoughts in a shared google document. He notes, “As a participant that was spot on for me knowing that my voice was valued.”
• Adam Poetzel uses short “turn n’ talk” strategies to help keep participants engaged, reflecting, and sharing with others. Adam has had participants form a “talking group” near the beginning of a workshop and do a quick ice-breaker to build some initial community and make sure everyone has a group.
• Scott Miller has had two participants collaborating on one device to allow for continual discourse. This is a great strategy to use with students as well while working on Desmos activities.
• Nick Corley likes to check in with participants between workshop sessions to see if any adjustments need to be made in the following session.

What ideas have you tried or experienced in workshops that help give participants a voice? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know on Twitter @desmos.