You Say You Want a Revolution

With two Saturday workshops left in our summer program we’re looking back on what we’ve learned so far, looking ahead at our two final workshops. We’re looking at how we can best use the technology to engage with the students, as well as reflecting on the feedback we’ve gotten so far.

Many of the activities have students use Desmos to build understanding of geometric relationships and graphical transformations. We’ve been trying to put students in situations where learning emerges organically from play. Some students have been telling us that they’d like more problem-oriented activities––things that feel more like the math they’ve learned in school, so we’re thinking about how to integrate that into this week’s workshop.

Last week’s activity was a combination of playing with rotations in Desmos, compiling what we’ve worked on to make something new, and review from the previous week for students who hadn’t made it to every breakout room. The creative breakout rooms involved students in using Desmos to animate their names or design a landscape image. The “revolutions” breakout room culminated with a small wheel rolling around the perimeter of a larger circle.

We’re looking forward to the year ahead and what our next workshops will look like. One of the obstacles we anticipate to getting our Desmos activities into classrooms, is teachers not wanting to learn how to use another online platform. Our workshops this summer have been focussed on reaching students, but, come fall, we’re thinking about potentially running a Desmos workshop for teachers.

Let us know what you think!

Peter Taylor Quote of the Week: “Cutting through the complexity to see the inner structure, that’s what mathematicians do.”