When I used Desmos in my Geometry classes I started by pulling up the student view of the activity on the smart board. The class started with us going through the review slides together. We spent time filling in the blanks of the questions and I was able to teach just like I was using a pre made PowerPoint. Once the class had gone through the review I had them log into the activity on their own personal devices.

Here I had the slide go section by section, forcing the students to work at the same pace. Once the majority of the class had finished a section I paused their activity and they watched as we went through some of their classmates responses. I made the names of the students all anonymize so that student's wouldn't be embarrassed by their answers. We talked about if the student was right or wrong. If the student was wrong we would look at another student's responses. After we talked about the question and how to solve it, I would reveled to the class the correct answer. We went through the rest of the material the same way.

While the student's worked I used the snapshot tool to create an instant presentation of some of the students work. By doing this I was able to create a presentation that brought up interesting points and perspectives that there peers had uncovered. It was a great way to rap up the class and have the students on a firm understanding of the topic. Later on I was able to go back to the activity and grade students on the participation during the class.

Click the Button Below To See The Activity I Created

When teaching in person the hardest part was transitioning from the smart board to my own computer to help the students with some virtual feedback and tracking how students were doing. One tricked I did was to have the smart board show the progress of the class, so if a student was behind they could see that they were not with the rest of the class. Another challenge I faced was that the students spent less time communicating to their groups because there was a screen in front of them. Although the students were allowed to talk to each other, only a few groups actually took that opportunity. Even though they did not all talk face to face, they still responded to their peers which was nice because during covid-19 they haven't had the opportunity to talk to students in different groups.

Another issue with using Desmos was convincing the students to transition from their own screens to the smart board. At first it was a challenge, but when I gave the students a transition sound it worked smoother. I really enjoyed using Desmos to teach in person and actually preferred it to using a powerpoint.

Here are a few observations I made after reviewing how the students did on the activity.

First off, looking at the confidence checks, the students averages went down from being confident to being a bit below confident. This could be due to the fact that the questions for the review steadily got harder and harder. So when student's made it to the finnaly question, they struggled and lost some of their steam.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that the students who participated in the activity had a better average test score than those who logged on but chose not to actively participate. Therefore there is potential for Desmos to show a teacher a rough estimate about what the students know and could accomplish.