I read about #MTBoS30 on Twitter yesterday.  After blogging only about once a month (or even every other month) for the past year or so, I actually blogged three times in a row last week!  I doubt I can blog something every day.  We have AP exams this week so we are missing class days, and then we only have two weeks left until finals.  But, I am going to try!  I love and miss blogging and am happy to get back into the habit again. Plus, I absolutely adore Anne so I’m in for anything she starts!

I am writing this blog as a Public Service Announcement.  Or rather should I say, Prevent Stupidity Announcement.  If you want to assign Desmos for homework but DON’T want your inbox to look like this (imagine about 150 more emails), then use Desmos Activity Builder.

This should have been obvious to me, but I’m never my best at the end of a long week (especially this close to May).  Thankfully, the wonderful Dylan Kane is way ahead of me and made a “blank slate” template on Desmos Activity Builder!  This is such an ingenious way to utilize Desmos and cut down on a teachers workload.  Instead of searching through my Haiku inbox or 170 emails to see students work, I will now only have to look at ONE page on Desmos.

For those of you not familiar with Activity Builder, you can start with Dylan’s template, make an instruction page, and then have your students create all of their graphs in the same place.  As a bonus, you don’t have to wait until they are finished and emailing you before you see what they have done.  You can watch them working LIVE, and help them if needed.  Your screen will have ALL student names and graphs on one page (also, love the new “fake names” option)!  

THIS is what my homework should have been.  Feel free to check it out and even play along if you like!  🙂