Mathsational

I need to admit that I got behind in Desmos world.  I noticed all the posts about activity builder on Twitter in the past year or so, but I did not choose to get involved.  Then I saw the announcements of polygraph and marble slides.  That did not get me to jump in either.  Maybe it was because I was reading much of this during the school year and I was too busy with 3 new preps to try to keep up with Desmos.  Fast forward to a little over a month ago when I saw tweets about card sorts on Desmos.  Now that got my attention.  I bought in within seconds.  I even created nearly a dozen lesson seeds for the upcoming year.  Now I LOVE Desmos.  In fact, whenever I plan an activity in the future, I'll probably ask would the assignment benefit from being Desmosfied?  Some things are better on paper and will remain that way, but I'm looking forward to turning some of my assignments into activity builders. I anticipate that kids will r...

  My favorite classroom tool is Doceri.  It does cost $30, but I use this iPad app every day, so it was well worth the cost.  You need a computer (laptop/desktop), wireless network, and projector to use Doceri.  It basically turns your computer into a whiteboard.  You can control your computer and any files remotely from the iPad.  I use this feature for PowerPoints during class.  You can eccentrically take a screen shot of whatever is on your screen (or use a number of included backgrounds such as graph paper) and then write on that image.  I use this feature most often.  I will make a PowerPoint presentation of my notes each day and then use Doceri to annotate each slide.  You have a ton of pen style/color choices so you can color code and highlight important parts of your class notes.  Doceri can save each annotated image and you can email it to yourself in PDF form.  This can become a document to post on your cla...