Desmos

DESMOS

"We imagine a world of universal math literacy, where no student thinks that math is too hard or too dull to pursue. We believe the key is learning by doing. When learning becomes a journey of exploration and discovery, anyone can understand – and enjoy! – math." - Desmos

Desmos has expedited the process of graphing in huge way. Not only is Desmos fun to play with, but it is an incredibly powerful teaching tool. My students use it to check their handwritten graphs, quickly interpret functions, and locate special points on graphs. It's also very powerful to show the affects of constraints and parameters on graphs instantaneously.

As more and more schools move to 1:1 technology in the classroom, tools like Desmos will quickly reduce the need for expensive and cryptic graphing calculators. The calculators that we, as teachers, have grown up with are trying to keep up by incorporating new features like wi-fi and color screens. Even with these new features, I'm finding my students preferring to plug an equation into Desmos on their phone, tablet or laptop because of the more intuitive design.

COSTFree

KEY FEATURES

• Intuitive - The design of Desmos is so easy to learn. It incorporates some of the math type that we're used to from word and our calculators so functions can be typed in ways that make sense. You don't need to know a bit of computer programming to understand what to type in. 
• Inspiring - Desmos.com showcases the incredible work that users have created. In fact there is a community built around the cool things that people have built using Desmos at dailydesmos.com.
• Diverse Input Methods - You can create  your graph by entering an equation (with or without constraints) or typing in a table.
• Sliders - Want to demonstrate how certain coefficients affect the shape of a graph? Try typing in y = Ax+B into Desmos to create sliders for A and B. Slide them around to demonstrate the affects of A and B on the graph.
• Shading - Graphing inequalities becomes easy (and artistic). Playing around to create something? Try adding color to your graph using inequalities and selecting a color.
• Find Your Point - Want to know what the x and y coordinates of that point are? Just click on the graph at the point you're interested in. You can even double click on important points like intercepts, maxima and minima to make them stick to your graph.
• Google maps like zoom - Remember spending 10 minutes with your students just trying to get the window of their graph right? Not with Desmos. They've created the graphing experience to act like Google Maps. Click the plus and minus to zoom in and out or create your own window in the settings menu.
• Digital Textbook integration - As we move further into the digital age and the increasing popularity of online texts, Desmos is beginning to get embedded into more and more digital texts. It seems that the authors of these texts are realizing the power of Desmos too!

IMPROVEMENTS

• Education forward: As a teacher, it would be great if Desmos would sponsor some teachers to build lessons around their software and turn them into online lessons. Similar to how Khan Academy built entire lessons around the curriculum they had created.
• Printability: I've found that adding an image of the graph that was created doesn't always print well, especially when dropped on to a worksheet or test. It'd be great if there were more options besides "Projector Mode" to customize appearance and make screen captures a little easier. 

Mentimeter

MENTIMETER

"We want people to stop thinking about presentation and start focusing on interaction. That’s the fundamental shift from how most meetings between people are carried out today and how we want to see it in the future." – Mentimeter

Mentimeter can transform a boring lecture into an interactive learning experience. I love using it as an opener or summarizer activity or for a check for understanding. My students love using it to display their knowledge, interests and anonymously showing their level of understanding on a given topic.

OVERVIEW

Mentimeter allows you to set up an online poll that you can display in front of your students. Students can respond using any internet connected device. Polling is simple, anonymous and instantaneous.

COST
Free (Some advanced features require a premium subscription of $99/month)

KEY FEATURES

• Student Engagement: Students love to respond and see their answers displayed on the board. How would you like to be sitting at a conference with the option to show your response to a question posed by the presenter? Would you feel more engaged? Like you contributed to what was learned during the presentation?
• Formative Assessment: Can you imagine asking a question and knowing immediately what your audience thinks? Mentimeter is amazingly simple, visual and powerful way to check for student's understanding at the beginning, end and throughout a lesson. 
• Differentiation: By making a check for understanding quick and easy you can quickly modify lessons to address different groups of students. I've noticed with some of my questions that many students are on the right track, but a small group might need extra help. It's easy to say "Red group, come meet me in the back for a little mini lesson, while the rest of the class gets started". 
• Real Time Data: As students vote, their results are immediately displayed on the screen. It's fun for students to watch as their vote gets cast. It's fun for teachers to watch as students try to convince one another why their answer is correct. 
• Quick and Easy: Questions can be set up in less than a minute. The set up is simple and creates a simple but beautiful product. It is also simple for students to use so you don't have to worry about a walk through of how to use the tool with your students. Not 1:1? Mentimeter works on any internet connected device. Students can use cell phones, tablets, laptops, iPods, etc. to submit their answers.
• Link Multiple Questions: If you know you'll be using Mentimeter multiple times in a lesson or period, you can link questions together so that students don't have to sign in again. Once they complete your first question, they will be told to wait until you project the next question in the series.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Downloadable Results: Downloadable results are only available for the premium version. I find myself often taking screenshots with Jing or printing the page to a pdf. 
• iOS/Android App: Although the website works well for mobile, it seems that this software could be easily run on an app, it's a shame they haven't created an app for it yet.
• Individual Data: While it's nice that the site doesn't require a login, it also makes it so everything is anonymous, whether you want it that way or not. This tool cannot be used to collect data about individual students and used to differentiate a learning plan for a student. It does, however, work wonderfully for choosing homogeneous groups to differentiate collaborative lessons.

Click here for Mentimeter's Inspiration for Teachers site for more ideas on how to use Mentimeter.

Class Dojo

CLASS DOJO

Class Dojo has been spreading like wildfire in classrooms all over the US. It has truly transformed the way that I do business in my 9-12 classroom. 

OVERVIEW

Class Dojo allows teachers to award dojo points to students to increase positive behaviors and decrease negative behaviors. Behaviors are recorded and tracked so teachers, students and parents can check up on student behavior.

COST
Free

KEY FEATURES

• Parental Involvement: Students and parents can set up accounts through classdojo.com with a teacher generated code. It has helped me lead more productive parent teacher conferences when I can hand a printout of all of the students behaviors. It also automatically generates a weekly behavior update email to parents.
• Immediate Reinforcement: If projected in front of the class, students recognize the behaviors that are less favorable and more favorable and know immediately when they are being exhibited. I have so many students fighting over a chance to participate or help out other students to increase their positive behavior points. Many students even say "I'm not going to disrupt the class any more, I can't get any more negative points."
• Standards-Based Grading Solution: Many schools are heading towards a 100/0 system, meaning 100% of your grade is based on the knowledge that you have displayed on some form of assessment and 0% of your grade is based on classwork, participation, work ethic and behavior. In our school we still value the 0% and struggle with a way to show their work ethic and behavior. Class Dojo gives me the opportunity to keep the value of the 0% visible and important to students and parents.
• Positive Learning Environment: I frequently see students looking for ways to increase their positive dojo points. When they're rewarded for their efforts, many of their classmates mimic the positive behaviors. It helps create and sustain a positive learning environment.
• iPad/Android App: It comes equipped with an easy to use app that allows you to track dojo points on the fly.
• Timer and Random Name Generator: We all use these two tools on a daily basis in some form. Now it's all incorporated into the website and app (timer not in app yet). 

IMPROVEMENTS
Class Dojo has a great customer support and frequently push out updates that were recommended and supported by teachers.

• Age Appropriate: My Juniors and Seniors found the avatars to be childish and didn't take the program seriously at first. Granted, we would hope by their junior and senior years, we wouldn't need it to curb behavior. I would imagine this system would make an even greater impact at the elementary level.
• Push Notifications: The app and website do nice push notifications while the console is up, but it would be nice to see notifications pushed on top of whatever is being projected. I often have Class Dojo running in the background on my projector while I have another site or worksheet up, so it makes it difficult for students to see when they are getting dojo points.

My Background

I started out as a part time math teacher in an Algebra classroom at a low-income, high-risk inner-city school with an enormous English Language Learner population near Grand Rapids, MI. I grew up in a very different world and had a very different experience at High School than all of my students did. I heard stories from students and other teachers about what some of our students were going through that I never knew existed outside of my middle-class white suburban education. While it was an awakening for me in many ways, I quickly learned how important the role of teacher is in so many of my student’s lives.

After budget cuts and layoffs in my first year, I was asked to return back to my school in the capacity of a Middle School Title 1 Math Teacher. I attended meetings in Lansing and worked tirelessly all summer with our assistant principal and an ELA/Spanish teacher to craft our school’s Middle School Title 1 Targeted Assistance Program. I spent my next two years teaching 5 preps covering 6th grade students all the way to Seniors in the course of one day. We build the middle school courses to help our most at-risk students find success in their regular math class. I used PBL techniques, technology, collaboration and universal design for learning to develop meaningful activities to enhance my student’s learning.

Over these years, I helped develop our High School’s successful Algebra Camp program for incoming freshmen. I was selected to help develop a curriculum with a local college for professionals in the STEM fields who wanted to gain a masters in education while working in inner city schools. During this time our High School fell in Michigan’s Persistently Low-Achieving schools list. Our school applied for a School Improvement Grant through the State of Michigan and extensively overhauled our School Improvement Plan.

After one of our teachers left, I was asked to take over as the Math Department Chair and was placed back into the high school curriculum. I now teach Algebra 1, Algebra 1 Support and developed our first Statistics course using only online resources. I have had the pleasure of working with many outstanding educators and administrators who have shaped the way I teach and learn today.

I am currently seeking my Master’s in Computer Information Systems. I believe that in many technology resources teachers must manipulate or hack the tools in order to make them usable in their classroom. While many EdTech companies have made large strides in this area, my goal in getting my degree in CIS is to be a liaison between EdTech startups and teachers to build tools that are so practical to instruction that they work seamlessly into the classroom.

Recently our school was given a second School Improvement Grant which we chose to apply to our 1:1 initiative. I was selected as the lead teacher in the role of implementing the technology into our high school. Over the past few months, I’ve been working extensively with our administrators, technology gurus, teachers and students to determine the most effective way to implement our 1:1 initiative in the high school. I’ve realized the passion that I have for the different technologies available to teachers and want to share that passion with every teacher at my school. I’ve found the internet, not only as a place for resources, but a common place for collaboration, enrichment and community and this blog is the start to giving back and sharing my passion for Ed Tech.

I hope you enjoy!