Building Your Own Activity

The first thing you want to do is create an account.

1. When you go to www.desmos.com, click the blue button on the far right side that says "Sign Up".

2. A box should have opened titled "Sign Up", if you are a teacher scroll to the bottom of the box and click the underlined "Sign Up As A Teacher"

3. Fill in the necessary information and click the blue box "Create An Account". Congrats You Did It!

If you want to ease into Desmos, try using one of the "Most Popular" pre-made activities. The featured collections have a list of different available activities that you can use at any time for your class.

Once you have decided what activity you would like to use, click on the activity and click on "Assign" and choose "Single Session Code" or "Assign to Your Classroom".

To start a slide deck I would recommend using a slide from the starter slides. The starter slides are a great way to warm up the class and see how they are feeling. Starter slides range from writing a response about yourself to making a robot happy or sad. To use a starter slide in your own activity, just copy the slide and paste it into your own slide deck.

Check out the photos below to see just some of the options available.

Students will learn by interacting with mathematical representations, illustrations of the world, and their classmates. They’ll represent their developing ideas with sketches, text responses, card sorts, number responses, multiple choice, and more.*

When you start your activity there is a bunch of things you can do while the class is working!

• Click Student Preview on any activity to experience it as a student.

• Use the teacher view to answers questions like:

  • • How did all my students answer this question?

    • What answers were most common?

• The summary view will answer questions like:

  • • Which students have logged in?

    • Where are my students in this activity right now?

    • Which students are further ahead or behind than I anticipated?

    • Were any questions particularly easy or challenging for my class?

• The summary view shows symbols on each slide. Each symbol represents something else.

Dash: It isn’t possible for students to do any work on this screen. Save your time and attention for other screens.

Check: Everything on this screen is correct.

Cross: Something on this screen is incorrect.

Warning: Something on this screen isn’t merely incorrect but indicates the student may have misunderstood the question itself—intervene ASAP!

Dot: This screen needs human interpretation.*

• On the left of the screen is anonymize this changes the names of all the students to famous mathematicians. If you want their original names again, you just have to click anonymize again.

• In the middle of the screen is pacing. This allows you to choose a screen, or multiple screens, that the students will be forced to work on.

• Another button is pause. This button pauses all of the students at the same time.

So you're done for the day or you're ready to show the class?

Well, the good news is that Desmos saves automatically! You don't have to do anything to save your activity!

If you want to use your activity click on the button in the far right-hand corner that says "Present".

Graph components are the core element of most Desmos activities. Use them alone, or combine them with other components like note and input.

The table component allows students to explore connections between multiple representations—graph to table, table to equation, text to table, and more!*

Sketch components offer an easy way to gather informal student thinking. With three background options (blank, graph, and custom image) the possibilities are endless.

With the media component, adding images and video to your activity is a piece of cake. Click to upload, or simply use our drag-and-drop feature.*

Whether you’re calling attention to some feature of a graph, or asking students to reflect on something they’ve just done, note components can play a key role in an activity. Add text, math, or a combination.

Use text and math input components in combination with a graph, image, and/or note to collect student responses and drive class discussion.*

We’ve been delighted by the ways teachers have used Activity Builder to spark, capture, and discuss student thinking. To further support those efforts, we now offer multiple choice and checkboxes.*

At Desmos, we love card sort activities and all the rich discussions we’ve seen them generate in classrooms over the years. So we’ve added a card sort tool to our Activity Builder that makes it even easier for teachers to create, deliver, and—most important of all—facilitate discussions around card sort activities.

Marbleslides is a delightful way for students to explore connections between the graphs and equations of lines, parabolas, and more. Now you can add marbleslides challenges to your own activities!

You can activate marbleslides on the Desmos Labs page.*

The Graphing Calc component gives students full access to the power of the Desmos Graphing Calculator. Use it to set up some initial equations for students to explore or leave it blank for students to create anything they like.*