Earlier on I was struggling to find an app that had the discovery capability of GSP for the iPad. As I have mentioned in a previous post, Sketchpad Explorer gives a partial solution as students can manipulate previously made GSP files. The problem... they can't make anything new!
So along came Desmos. And, by the way, you don't need an iPad to use it, just head to https://www.desmos.com/ and launch the free calculator.
It's fantastic! Students can graph lines, parabolas, sinusoidals, exponentials, ... If you can name it, odds are Desmos can graph it. But, beyond simply graphing an equation, students can create equations with parameters and truly explore how each parameter affects the graph.
How I've Used Desmos
3U
1. Students explored the various parameters in our general function equation to determine the effect of each. f(x) = a f[k(x - d)] + c
Here is an example of a set-up a student could use to explore the parameters in an exponential function.
*Note that I have restricted some of the sliders and altered the windows.
**You can create a link just like this to share with your students, or they can share the link with you or eachother: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/46fyqy1xcg
2. Students used the app to check the correctness of their hand-written graphs.
3C
1. My grade 11s spent a lot of time in Desmos during our quadratics units. Making connections among all of the parameters in factored form, vertex form and standard form was really a lot of fun!
In addition, they explored the graphical properties of Differences of Squares, Perfect Square Trinomials, and Quadratics with a c-value of zero (common factoring).
I really believe that the interactivity and exploratory nature of the program helped my students get a real appreciation for the graphical properties and relationships therein.
Coming Soon
This semester I will use Desmos with my 1Ds to explore linear relations and linear systems.
In addition, I will bring Desmos back into my 3C course to explore exponential relations.
