Briefly
- At Desmos, we’re now asking ourselves one question about everything we make: “Will this help teachers develop social and creative classrooms?” We’ve chosen those adjectives because they’re simultaneously qualities of effective learning and also interestingtechnology.
- We’ve upgraded three activities (and many more to come) with our new Challenge Creator feature: Parabola Slalom, Laser Challenge, and Point Collector: Lines. Previously, students would only complete challenges we created. Now they’ll create challenges for eachother.
- The results from numerous classroom tests have been – I am not kidding you here – breathtaking. Near unanimous engagement. Interactions between students around mathematical ideas we haven’t seen in our activitiesbefore.
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One question in edtech bothers us morethan nearly any other:
Why are students so engaged by their tablets, phones, and laptops outside of class and so bored by them inside of class?
It’s the same device. But in one context, students are generallyenthusiastic and focused. In the other, they’re often apathetic anddistracted.
At Desmos, we notice that, outside of class, studentsuse their devices in ways that are social and creative. They create all kinds ofmedia – text messages, videos, photos, etc. – and they share that media withtheir peers via social networks.
You might think that comparison isunfair – that school could never stack up next to Instagram or Snapchat – butbefore we write it off, let’s ask ourselves, “How social and creative is math edtech?” What do students create and whom do they share those creations with?
In typical math edtech,students create number responses and multiple choice answers. And they typically share those creations with an algorithm, a few lines ofcode. In rarer cases, their teacher will see those creations, but moreoften the teacher will only see the grade the algorithm gave them.
For those reasons, we think thatmath edtech is generally anti-social and uncreative, whichexplains some of the apathy and distraction we see when students use technologyinside of class.
Rather than write off the comparison to Instagramand Snapchat as unreasonable, it has motivated us to ask two more questions:
- How can we help students create mathematically in more diverseways?
So we invite students to createparking lots,scale giants,mathematical arguments, tilings,sketches of relationships,laser configurations,drawings of polygons,tables,stacks of cards,Marbleslides,informal descriptions of mathematical abstractions,sequences of transformations,graphs of the world around them, and many more.
- How can we help teachers and students interact socially around thosecreations?
So we collect all of those creations on a teacher dashboard and we give teachersa toolkitand strategies to help them create conversations around those creations.It’s easier to ask your students, “How are these two sketches thesame? How are they different?” when both sketches are right in front ofyou and you’re able to pause your class to direct their focus to thatconversation.
Today, we’re releasing a new tool to helpteachers develop social and creative math classrooms.
Challenge Creator
Previously in our activities, students would only completechallenges we created and answer questions we asked. WithChallenge Creator, they create challenges for each other and askeach other questions.
We tried this in one of our firstactivities, Waterline, where,first, we asked students to create a graph based on three vases we gavethem.
And then we asked them to create a vase themselves. If they could successfullygraph the vase, it went into a gallery where other students would try to graphit also.
We began to seereportsonline ofstudents’ impressive creativity and perseverance on that particularchallenge. We started to suspect the following: that students caresomewhat when they share their creations with an algorithm, and caresomewhat more when they share their creations with their teacher.
But they care enormously when they share their creations with each other.
So we’ve added “Challenge Creators” to three moreactivities, and we now have the ability to add them to any activity ina matter of hours where it first took us a month.
InParabola Slalom, we ask students to find equations of parabolas that slip in between the gateson a slalom course. And now we invite them to create slalom courses for eachother. Those challenges can be as difficult as the authors want, but unless theycan solve it, no one else will see it.
InLaser Challenge, we ask students to solve reflection challenges that we created. Andnow we invite them to create reflection challenges for each other. InPoint Collector, we ask students to use linear inequalities to capture blue points in themiddle of a field of points. And now we invite them to create a field of pointsfor each other.
We’ve tested each of these extensively withstudents. In those tests we saw:
- Students calling out their successes to each other from across the room. “Javi, I got a perfect score onyours!”
- Students calling out their frustrations to each other from across the room. “Cassie, how do you even dothat?”
- Students introducing themselves to each other through their challenges. “Who isOscar?”
- Students differentiating their work. “Let’s find an easy one. Oo –Jared’s.”
- Students looking at solutions to challenges they’d already completed, and learning new mathematical techniques. “You can dothat?!”
- Students marveling at each others’ ingenuity. “Damn, Oscar. You hellasmart.”
- Proud creation. One student said, “We’re going to make our challenge as hard as possible,” to which his partner responded, “But we have to be able to solveit!”
- Screams and high fives so enthusiastic you’d think we were payingthem.
At the end of one test of Point Collector, we asked students, “What wasyour favorite part of the activity?” 25 out of 27 students said someversion of “Solving other people’s challenges.”
I’m not saying what we saw was on the same level of enthusiasm and focusas Instagram or Snapchat.
But it wasn’t that far off, either.
Questions We Can Answer
How much does it cost?
As with everything else we make that’s free for you to usenow, we will never charge you for it.
Will we be able to create our own Challenge Creators?
Eventually, yes. Currently, the Triple C (Challenge Creator Creator,obv.) has too many rough edges to release widely. Once those edges are sandeddown, we’ll release it. We don’t have a timeline for that work, butjust as we think student work is at its best when it’s social andcreative, we think teacher work is at its best under those exact sameconditions. We want to give teachers the best toolkit possible and enable themto share their creations with each other.
Questions We Can’t Answer
What effect does asking a student to create a challenge have on her learning and her interest in learning?
What sorts of challenges are most effective? Is this approach just as effective for arithmetic expressions as laser challenges?
Does posing your own problem help you understand the limits of a concept better than if you only complete someone else’s problems?
Researchers, grad students, or any other parties interested in thosesame questions: please get in touch.
