REMAST wrap up

A couple of weeks ago I presented a session about Desmos at the REMAST Conference in here Brookings, SD.  The presenter speaking before me was Matt Miller (@jmattmiller), author of "Ditch That Textbook".

I feel honored that Matt listened to my Desmos 101 talk, and also that he decided to take some of his famous sketch notes at the same time.  I would love to be able to sketch notes like this!

The Word about Desmos is Getting Around

The ISTE 2016 conference is currently taking place in Denver, and until today I have never heard of the ISTE conference.  It looks like I need to take a long look into this one for the future.

Based on what I'm finding on Twitter tonight, two gentlemen (Bob & Jedidiah) presented a session on Desmos today.  Two reasons for this blog post:

1. It amazes me what social media is doing to my personal professional development.

2. The word about Desmos is spreading like wildfire.

Last November, my colleague Jarrod and I attended the NCTM regional conference in Minneapolis.  We crudely estimated that easily more than half of people we talked to had never heard of Desmos (or simply thought that it was only an online graphing calculator).

That led us to feel the need to start spreading the word around our region.  This February, Jarrod and I presented a session on Desmos at the SDCTM conference.  Anywhere from 25-40 people attended our session.  Once again, the theme was many had never heard about Desmos or the Desmos teacher website.

Based on what took place in Denver today via Twitter, another batch of math educators were exposed to Desmos and here is what some had to say:

I couldn't agree with these folks more.  The word is out.  Desmos is revolutionizing the way we can engage students in our math classrooms.  I can't wait to see what 2016-2017 has in store for math education!

South Dakota Counts Instructor

Today begins my journey as an instructor for a class offered for graduate credit.  I am teaching a course titled ED 611: Algebraic Reasoning for K-12 Educators through the South Dakota Counts program.  I've experienced three summers of these type of classes as a student and I'm excited to be a part of the process again.

Nerves are present (like any "first day of school") but I am confident things will go well all week.