Desmos Fellows Weekend v2.0

Two years ago, I was a member of cohort 2 of the Desmos Fellowship.  On my way home from Fellowship weekend, I wrote a blog post about my experience.

This summer, I was invited to join the cohort 4 weekend as an alumni Desmos Fellow.  It was an honor to be asked back and it was again a wonderful experience.  As I sit on my flight back to Brookings, I want to highlight my top five takeaways from the weekend.  In no particular order…

1. I was reminded that I have a lot to learn about equity, access, and social justice.  This past year has been an eye-opener for me.  The SDMath/Sci Leadership cohort I was a part of helped me realize that I have a long way to grow.  This weekend helped me grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined.  I appreciate that Desmos is committed to helping find solutions to these topics.

2. Imposter Syndrome is real.  On Friday at 4pm, Fellows weekend officially kicked off with an icebreaker activity.  Standing in a large circle, each person had 20 seconds on the clock to introduce themselves and talk about something that they were bringing with them this weekend.  Responses varied, but there were many in the room feeling “I’m very nervous about being here … I don’t feel as though I’m good enough to belong here … I can’t believe I’m here … I’m not worthy!”  (BTW – nice equity move by Team Desmos by putting 20 seconds on the clock and forcing people to adhere to the time constraint.  The very subtle equity piece: if someone was done talking before the 20 seconds had elapsed, we were to stand in silence until the time was up.  Not only did the 20 second mandate restrict someone from talking way too long, it also ensured that everyone have an equal voice.)

3. Desmos growth.  Not only are there now 40+ more Desmos Fellows, the Desmos Teaching Team continues to grow as well.  In the past 12 months, Desmos has hired a half dozen or so former teachers to join their teaching team.

4. It was great to connect with other teachers who are wrestling with the same – for lack of a better word – issues that I am.  I had a couple of deep conversations with various Fellows focused on a variety of topics. One such conversation was about standards based grading and the role of homework.  I’m planning on implementing a target based grading system this year and still have a few wrinkles to iron out before school begins in August. It’s encouraging to know that I have some people in the Fellowship who I can reach out to who are also implementing SBG.  

5. I am extremely excited about the changes happening in mathematics education. The CCSS have been around for nearly a decade.  There are pockets of teachers slowly breaking away from traditional methods and embracing inquiry-based, conceptual-based methods.  There are research based best practices that support collaboration, equity, student identity, and access available to all teachers.  Colleges and universities are starting to worry less about GPA and class rank and more about recruiting students who have learned how to collaborate, to communicate, and to think. 

My flight is about over and it is time for me to snap back to reality.  On the forefront of my mind is how can my department at BHS help all students become better mathematicians, and in turn, help raise the percentage of students who are “proficient” or better on the Smarter Balanced test.

Mid-credit scene:
Fellow alumni Lauren suggested to us that we write ourselves a letter to help solidify the memory.  This is the letter to myself.  With that, I'll post a few pictures.

San Francisco from "The Rock"

Welcome to HQ!

Our "home group": Matt, Sam, Tim, and I (among other home groups)

I found time to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge!

Post-credit scene: I will never think of seals the same way.  Thanks, Joce!

Desmos Transformation Golf + What My Assessment Looked Like

My geometry classes just recently completed our unit on transformations.  I was super excited to be teaching transformations this year because a few weeks ago Desmos released one of their coolest activities to date: Transformation Golf: Rigid Motion.  If you haven't checked out this activity, stop reading this post and go take a peek.

I wrestled with figuring out the best time to do this activity with students.  Should I launch the unit with it?  Do I do the activity after the unit as a performance task?  When does this best fit?

I decided to do the activity as a review for the test.  My intent was to help students solidify their understanding as well as to allow students to see that there is more than one composition of transformations that will yield the same result.

So I had students complete the activity in class.  I used quite a bit of teacher pacing and paused students often to discuss some of their thinking during the activity.  It's such a fun day to lead.  Students found a lot of pleasure finding their own ways to complete the tasks.  Take a look at the various ways students did challenge #8.

To wrap up the lesson, I had students complete an exit ticket to summarize their thoughts about the activity.  Here are a few quotes from students:
"It was fun and I liked how we got to make different things different ways."
"It made me think in different ways than I normally would."
"I like how it made me think outside of the box and creatively."
"I liked that it was a little bit of a challenge."

As part of the unit test, I wanted to give students some problems that were similar to the Transformation Golf activity.  I wanted students to have the opportunity to be creative and get the correct solution in more than one way.  At the same time, I wanted the problems to be a bit challenging and I wanted to assess the students' understanding of transformations on the coordinate plane.

So I created six different problems that consisted of a pre-image figure and its image on a coordinate plane.  (A link to the test problems is here.)  Students were required to provide the list of steps needed to map the pre-image onto the image.  The level of precision expected was this: for translations, I needed the translation rule.  For reflections, I needed the equation of the line of reflection.  For rotations, I needed the center and degree of rotation.  Counterclockwise rotations were the default; students could rotate clockwise if they desired, as long as they noted the direction.

I was really stressing out about grading these problems because I knew there were many correct answers.  I wouldn't be able to have one answer as a key; I would need to check each problem with a fine-toothed comb.  With over 80 geometry students, I was worried about how long this task would take me.

Here is a sample of some the student responses.  All of these solutions are for the same problem.

As it turns out, I found great joy in grading these problems.  Yes, it took a bit of time...more time than it would have had I given my students a multiple choice assessment.  But to see the creativity, thinking, and effort that students demonstrated was well worth my time.

I won't lie and say that all students did awesome work on this assessment.  A common error was not being specific about the location of the center of rotation.  [Often times the students intended the center to be the origin, but didn't specify.  These errors led to a good conversation about precision.] 

A few students who struggled mentioned that this assessment was tougher than the Desmos activity for two reasons.  First, checking their work on the assessment was a bit tougher than checking on Desmos.  The Desmos activity provides immediate feedback when a student performs a transformation.  Second, the transformations on Desmos did not require use of coordinates, equations of lines, etc.  I have a handful of students who still struggle with writing the equation of a line.  They are able to draw / sketch the line of reflection when given a pre-image & image, but they are not able to write the equation of that line very well.  These students were able to complete the Desmos activity without too much problem but struggled to complete this assessment correctly.

So, team at Desmos, here is my request.  I LOVE the Transformation Golf activity.  It made teaching transformations incredible enjoyable this year.  I would love to see a "Transformation Golf: Round 2" activity that includes the x- and y-axes on the grid and that requires students to provide translation rules, equations of lines of reflections, and coordinates of centers of rotation in order to perform the transformations.  My thought would be to have students start with the existing activity in order to learn some of the general transformation tools, and then send to the "Round 2" activity that ramps up the precision.  Thanks in advance!  ;-)

Desmos Marbleslides Challenge Set

This year, I'm trying something new with my students.  The idea came from a Desmos Fellow name Sean Sweeney.  His blog post does a great job explaining how this works; I invite you to read about his experiences with what he calls his Marbleslides Challenge Set.

Two weeks ago, my geometry classes had just finished our unit on parallel and perpendicular lines.  As part of that unit, I had students do the Desmos Marbleslides: Lines activity.  Students loved the activity and asked for more Marbleslides.  In response, I unleashed the challenge set to my students.  [At least the first three challenges.]

Each week I am unlocking one more challenge inside the activity.  This past week was an especially cool challenge, with the screen almost like a Plinko board.  I've had a number students find solutions and experiences the "Success!" found at the end of the Desmos rainbow.  And as a teacher, you know you're winning when students are begging for the next challenge to be unlocked.

I challenge you to read Sean's post and try the Desmos Marbleslides challenge out in your school.  Happy 'Slidin'!

NCTM Conference @ Orlando Reflection

I’m on my way back home from the NCTM Regional Conference in Orlando.  I had an awesome four days in Florida.  My brain feels somewhere between the consistency of oatmeal and Jello.  I need to get my thoughts recorded before I return home to four children and the responsibilities of real life.  [Update: I didn’t get the full post written before I returned home; the movies on the airplane stole my attention.]

I had initially planned on doing a running diary-like blog post of my experiences at the conference, but soon realized that there is too much info to consume to be continually writing and reflecting.  Instead, I give you my five biggest takeaways from my conference experience.

1.         Desmos is still a mystery to too many classroom teachers.

            Okay, not all of Desmos.  But the teacher activities found at teacher.desmos.com.  In the first session I attended on Thursday, Matt Vaudrey (The Classroom Chef) had participants pair up with a partner and play Polygraph.  I rotated around to four different people and asked each of them if they had heard of Desmos before.  Three of out four responded along the lines of “Yeah, my students and I use the calculator quite often.”  When I asked them about every using Polygraph before, all three responded “No” and had never been to the Desmos teacher site.  The fourth person had never used Desmos at all before.

            Overall, I counted seven sessions (out of about 260) that included Desmos in the title or the description.  Other session may have absolutely used Desmos as part of their presentations and simply didn’t include “Desmos” in the description.  Not all of the seven sessions necessarily used the Desmos teacher site.  I’m by no means advocating for Desmos to take over the conference.  However, I continue to be floored at how many teachers have no idea that the Desmos teacher site exists.

            When talking to some of my Desmos Fellow / MTBoS colleagues, I mentioned my surprise at the lack of knowledge about the teacher site.  One conjecture we made is that if you visit desmos.com there is a link to the teacher site, but the link doesn’t really “stick out”.  We felt as though flashing neon lights might help.  Another conjecture is that until textbook companies direct teachers to go to the teacher site, it will never reach all who really need to see it.  I’m curious about something… textbook companies like Pearson and CPM are now starting to embed Desmos activities into their curriculum.  I’m wondering if teachers using those resources are prompted to “Go to teacher.desmos.com, create a class code, etc” or if they simply are able to run the activity via a link found in their curriculum’s resources.

            Teachers need to be told about the Desmos teacher site and need to be guided through setting up their account, searching for & bookmarking activities, creating a class code, and using the teacher dashboard.  There is also a strong need for a session where the Activity Builder is demonstrated, and the Activity Builder Code is investigated.  Which brings me to…

2.         I feel really motivated to share with other teachers by speaking at conferences.

            One NCTM regional conference next fall is in Kansas City, which is less than 6 hours away from Brookings via car.  The deadline for proposals to speak is December 2^nd.  I’m going to apply to speak and I’m leaning toward my proposal being about the Desmos teacher site.

            This week, I prepared a number of proposals for sessions at the SDCTM conference in February.  My colleague & fellow Desmos Fellow Jarrod and I are also going to submit a proposal for an in-depth session at the TIE conference in April.  I’m also happy to be presenting a full day session on Desmos at the SDCTM Summer Symposium in July.

            Also this week, I gained a lot of confidence in my ability to speak on ideas and things happening in my classroom that are not connected to Desmos.  Resources such as Which One Doesn’t Belong?, Estimation 180, 3 ACT tasks, My Favorite No, and Padlet had their fingerprints in many sessions.  Manipulatives such as Algebra Tiles, Patty Paper, and GeoBoards were demonstrated as tools that help student develop conceptual understanding.  I regularly use all of these things in my classroom.  One of the session proposals I prepared for the SDCTM conference demonstrates a few of these resources.

3.         I have fresh ideas about how to improve what I’m doing in my classroom.

            Continual improvement is something I like to think I strive for.  I gained a lot of new ideas this week on things I can do to improve my craft.  A couple of ideas I’m hoping to implement soon are warm-up routines, tweaking my WODB a bit to make students think about a reason each one doesn’t belong, and using GIFs embedded into Desmos to help students visualize the intended mathematics (thanks, Jedidiah!).  Also, I was reminded that I need to take a long look at Mathalicious and Quizlet Live; both resources seem to have some pretty strong supplementary resources.

4.         TI and I are on a break.

            This takeaway needs its own blog post.  Coming soon…

5.         The online math community is powerful.

            I’m going to have to say that networking & collaborating was one of the highlights of my week.  It began before the conference even started while I was walking to the Wednesday keynote session.  I bumped into Sam Shah on my walk to the conference center.  He and I met this summer in San Francisco at the Desmos Fellows weekend.  He introduced me to two of his colleagues who were walking with him.

            Then in the keynote session, I happen to sit next to Tracy Johnston Zager.  Her and I have a number of short conversations as part of the interactive session.  Directly in front of us are Desmos Fellows Heather Kohn and Lisa Bejarano.  Heather had asked Lisa and I to present on the Global Math Department’s webinar back on September 19^th.  (Our session was titled “What’s New at Desmos?” and yes, Dan Meyer presented with us.  Due to Dan’s loyal followers, there were over 500 people trying to view the webinar.  We crashed the host server & were unable to effectively show what was new at Desmos.)  Heather and Lisa introduced me to #MTBoS faithful Hedge and Joel Bezaire.  Michael Fenton was one of the keynote speakers and I spoke with him briefly after his presentation. 

            The next two days, I run into Desmos Fellows Carl Oliver and Jedidiah Butler.  I chatted with Christopher Danielson about this “Math on a Stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.  I sat next to Kyle Pearce in a couple of different sessions.  I met Justin Aion and David Wees.  I caught up with David Barnes and Patrick Vannebush, both of who I met at NCTM Minneapolis back in 2015.  The list goes on…

Holding down the fort at the #MTBoS booth.

I’d strongly recommend attending an NCTM if you have the resources to do so.  SO.  MUCH.  COLLABORATION.  I feel extremely fortunate to be able to attend.  I want to say “Thank You” once again to Daktronics for supporting SDCTM and the SD Math Teacher of the YearAward.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be presenting next fall in Kansas City.  Time to get working on the speaker proposal!

Desmos Fellowship 2017 Reflection

I’m writing this blog post on my flight home from San Francisco.  I figure I’d better transition my thoughts into words before I return home to the responsibilities of being a father of four. 

The Desmos Fellows weekend was awesome.  It was everything I had imagined plus 120% more.  Here are some highlights, in no particular order…

Star Shock – Team Desmos

When I first arrived at the Desmos Headquarters on Friday afternoon, who other than Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) was there greeting us at the door.  I’ve met Dan before on two separate occasions, but this one felt a bit different.  Inside the HQ, I cross paths with Shelley Carranza (@stcarranza).  I introduce myself to Michael Fenton (@mjfenton).  Not long after, Eli Luberoff (@eluberoff) enters the room. 

As introductions begin, I realize that I’m sitting in the chair that Desmos programmer Denis Lantsman (@dlants) typically sits in.  Jenny Wales (@jenny_wales), Cori McElwain (@CoriMcElwain), and Zack Ellis (@overZellis) are sitting nearby.  Many of the people who are responsible for creating activities I use in my classroom are all here.

As the weekend continued, I was able to interact a lot with the team from Desmos.  During lunch on Saturday, Michael and I had a conversation about our children.  I picked Dan’s brain about his thoughts on transitioning some 3-ACT tasks into Activity Builder.  I asked Eli if he is planning on billing SDCTM for his travel to South Dakota this past February.  I listened to Jenny talk about how neat New Orleans is.  All of these conversations helped the shock wear off a bit.

Michael Fenton, Jarrod, and I

Star Shock – The Fellowship

Prior to arriving, there was a lot of activity on Twitter and on the Desmos Slack from members of the Fellowship.  Some of the Fellows I had been following on Twitter for years.  I have read their blogs and borrowed their ideas and favorite lessons.  I felt like I knew a little bit about some of the Fellows but in a very impersonal way.

The personalization of those connections began even before I set foot in California.  In route to San Francisco, I had a stop in Denver.  While there, I met Jon Orr (@MrOrr_geek) and Angela Reilly Harden (@angelarh).  In the weeks leading up to the Fellows weekend, I had worked with Jon on an Activity Builder centered on algebra and “Two Truths and a Lie”.  Jon and Angela joined Jarrod (my Brookings colleague and fellow Fellow) and I and the four of us exchanged stories as we found our way to our hotel.

As I drifted around the room at Desmos HQ, I found myself shaking hands with a number of familiar names from Twitter and MTBoS.  I recognized some names from activities found in Desmos.  I started to wonder how I was selected to be a part of such a talented group of people.

Jon Orr and I

Professional Development

A big highlight of mine was being able to listen to the PD sessions put on by the Desmos team. 

Saturday morning, Michael gave a presentation about the Principles for Activity Building.  He had us work through Point Collector as a student and then analyze which design principles were being used during the activity.  It was great to do a deep dive into the 13 design principles.

Jenny and Shelley presented on the Desmos design process.  I learned a really cool strategy for creating activities that uses 8-squares and sticky notes.

Eli spoke to the group about the history and evolution of Desmos.  It was awesome to see some of the artifacts Eli was able to access and inspiring to hear about the future of Desmos.

Scott Miller (@smiller229) and Jenn Vadnais (@rilesblue) presented a session on strong presentation moves when speaking about Desmos.  I really enjoyed learning ways that I can improve my skill level as a presenter.

Dan led a two hour session focused on working with teachers and how to become a Desmos Certified presenter.  I really enjoyed learning about the types of things the team at Desmos wants us to be focusing on while giving presentations.  One big takeaway from Dan’s session was that technology allows teachers and students to co-construct the experience.  I hope to become a Desmos Certified presenter soon.

Michael's Presentation

Eli speaking about the history of Desmos

New Tools

Dan also led a session that introduced the Fellows to a new tool that we have access to inside of Activity Builder called Computation Layer (CL).  CL grants access into more of the guts of Activity Builder and allows creators to do a number of things that previously couldn’t have been done.  With my limited computer programming experience, I understand about 3.14% of what I have access to in CL.  During our work sessions, I learned a lot about CL thanks largely to Paul Jorgens (@pejorgens) and Angela.  I plan to continue to learn more about programming and using CL.

I’m very excited to see what some of the brightest Fellows can create for us to use these next few months.

Dan showing us CL.

Angela, Paul, and I

The City

This was my first time ever in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Jarrod and I enjoyed exploring the city.  Items we checked off our bucket list include seeing Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, riding a Cable Car, and eating at House of Prime Rib.  The weather was beautiful and the food was excellent.

Golden Gate @ Sunset

Hangin' on the Cable Car

Totally Impressed!

I’m excited to be part of this awesome group of people.  They re-kindled my fire to improve my practice, be a leader, and help change how student experience mathematics.

Desmos HQ

I love the fact that there is every issue of Mathematics Teacher in house.

Desmos Fellowship 2017

Desmos Fellowship Preview

Quick tangent: We are over halfway through June.  Where has the summer gone?


The second cohort of Desmos Fellows was recently announced.  I'm honored and excited to be a part of it.  When the first cohort was selected, I had to decline an invitation to join due to the birth of my child.  Fortunately, I was grandfathered into the second cohort and here we are!

I'm looking forward to learning from this Fellowship and being a part of something that is making major changes in the field of mathematics education.

2017 TIE Conference

The 2017 TIE Conference (held in Rapid City, SD) is right around the corner.  If you happen to attend, here's a little insight into a couple of sessions that I'll be co-presenting on.

Sunday, April 23

Sharon Rendon (@srendon2), Jarrod Huntimer (@BHSGeometry), and I will be hosting an in-depth session focused on Desmos.  During the four-hour session, participants will get a deep look at teacher.desmos.com as well as the Activity Builder features.

Monday, April 24

Jarrod and I will also be hosting a breakout session on Desmos.  We plan to give participants a brief overview of the teacher.desmos.com site and the Activity Builder features.  We do plan to customize the presentation based on the comfort level and previous Desmos experience of the participants present that day.

Here's to a great conference and WIFI that works for our participants!

We'd love to see you in Rapid City!

Explore MTBoS 2017 - Week 3

Last year, I found the time to blog for all four weeks of the MTBoS blogging initiative.  This year, I'm happy to be able to find the time to blog once.  [My wife and I welcomed our fourth child last November; between our new baby and our other three kids being more and more involved in activities, time is a premium in my world.]

The prompt for the week is to write about a single blogpost or compile a bunch of various posts.  I'm going to cheat a bit and simply highlight one blog that is my top 5.

The Desmos Blog (http://blog.desmos.com/) is typically updated each week and contains a wealth of strong information.  Some of my favorite posts found within the blog are the "Friday Fave" variety.  The team at Desmos highlights their favorite activity created in activity builder.

Also, this blog is where you can find information about the newest Desmos features.

I try to read the new blog postings the day they are posted, but I'm currently a few weeks behind.  [See: new baby.]

One last piece of info I'd like to share.  My colleague and I are presenting a session on Desmos and the Activity Builder features at South Dakota's annual math and science conference in February.

Here's the thing... Desmos Founder Eli Luberoff is a featured speaker at the conference and is presenting a number of sessions focused on Desmos as well.  Luckily, his presentations are not at the same time as ours (we want to attend his presentations!).  But we are feeling a little like Wayne and Garth in the following clip.

Here's to Jarrod and I not bombing our presentation with Eli in the house!

Opening Day 2016

Our school has a unique way to open the school year.  On the first day, all classes have meetings in the morning in order for the administration to set rules, highlight critical policies, etc.  Then students and their parents come either in the afternoon or evening and experience a shortened schedule during which they go to each class for a 10 minute session.   I don't really think of this as the first day of school, but rather a "back-to-school" event.

The true opening day is the following day.  Students come for our regular Wednesday schedule (1:30 release time) and we dive right in.

This year, I teach advanced algebra 2 during first hour.  I talked briefly about some of the rules / expectations that I have.  The nice thing is that I had most of my students in geometry last year, so many of the expectations are already established.  I gave the students the Google Classroom code and made sure they were all able to gain access.  I also lined students up with their Pearson Realize login information and gave a brief tutorial on how to find resources inside of that platform.

Lastly, we had about 20 minutes of class time remaining and I wanted to get the kids a taste of what we're going to be doing tomorrow.  Our first activity tomorrow what we call the Garden Problem.  It is very much like the Visual Patterns tasks that you can see on Fawn Nguyen's site.  Luckily for me, David Cox and Desmos had an awesome activity created that I had students work on to finish class.

I had students work with their elbow partner to complete the task.  Overall, things went very well.  There is a lot of power in Desmos' ability to sketch on the screen.  Here is an example of one group's work.

I'm really looking forward to using Desmos again this year.  I feel Opening Day was a victory for the home team.

2017 SDCTM Conference Proposal

I just submitted a conference proposal for Jarrod and I to present at the SDCTM conference in Huron on February 3-4, 2017.  We are planning a two hour session where participants will explore the Desmos activities and activity builder features.

I held a Desmos training session earlier this summer at BHS, and since then Desmos has made some major changes and literally hundreds of new activities have been created.  I'm interested to see what else will change between now and February.

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!