PearDeck

R2D2 – Pear Deck/Desmos Mash Up!

by Jon Orr

School is just right around the corner for us up here in Ontario and I can’t stop thinking about that first day. As for my grade 9 applied class’ first day I have ran the R2D2 problem in the past with great success.
Now, over the summer I’ve seen great improvements in Pear Deck and wanted to get into it! Also Desmos has been busy and released Activity Builder!! So let’s mash these two apps up with some R2D2!!

So here is the R2D2 problem presented with Pear Deck and an extensions with Desmos….

Act 1: The video

and this is what Pear Deck will show after you insert the video…..love how the video will be displayed on the projector and not on each individual device!!!

IMG_1418

I like using Pear Deck here for asking for wonderings and notices because it allows students who normally won’t shout out answers to have a voice in the room. Students get to input their responses and the teacher can show them on the projector.

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 10.54.42 AM

For generating estimates I absolutely love how they put our Too high and Too low guess on a number line…..it gives us the visual of where our actual estimates will lie.

IMG_1417

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 10.54.11 AM

Act 2: Gathering the Info

In the new version here I get students to draw their estimates of the dimensions of both the board and the post it note…..this pushes them into drawing diagrams.

IMG_1419

 

Revealing the dimensions….

 

Students are ready to solve….

 

IMG_1421

Act 3: Revealing The answer

The Extension: How many rectangles can we make that have an area of 609 post it notes?
To extend I want students draw out different rectangles and label their dimensions! They can use Pear Deck’s white board!

IMG_1422

But then they can enter them into Desmos through a pre-made activity I created in Activity Builder. (the Pear Deck file links to the Desmos activity).

IMG_1423
For each rectangle the student can come up with they find the perimeter and plot the length vs. perimeter in the Desmos graph. The teacher on the projector can use the Overlay function and show all the different rectangles students are coming up with…essentially showing the pattern that emerges! Using the pattern students can read off the minimum perimeter!

 

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 11.11.50 AM

 

If you have a Pear Deck account Grab and download the file below!

[aio_button align=”center” animation=”none” color=”blue” size=”medium” icon=”star” text=”Pear Deck File” relationship=”dofollow” url=”https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9g0jeaVwshveDVhWktzdTRudE0/view?usp=sharing”]

Link to the Desmos Activity

#10GoodThings

by Jon Orr

Around this time of year we get bogged down. The semester is ending, we’re getting our exams in order, EQAO is here, kids are realizing that this is the end too!, extra help sessions at lunch.
I was feeling the crunch a bit this week and then read this post from @stoodle

I thought I would throw a list of my ten good things from 2014 together. It’s good for my self reflection and to remind myself I did some good this semester. I’m going to tag a few teachers on Twitter and challenge them to put a list together.

Here are my ten good things from 2014

1. I’m adaptable. I try lots of new strategies, tools, tech out in class and when something doesn’t go as planned I make do!

2. Students seem to not hate me

3. I’m not afraid of technology. If I see something that will enhance my students’ learning. I’ll give it a shot! My favourite this last semester: @PearDeck

4. My students now use Desmos as part of their vocabulary.

5. My use of open questions gets kids to think first. They try it first —instead of waiting for me to show them.

6. Because of Twitter and my pln I have grabbed lots of ideas and have tons of strategies for lessons.

7. Using estimation180 is making students see reasonableness in their answers. The estimating we do as warm ups is carriying through to solving problems. They are better are judging whether their answer makes sense or not.

8. I love creating three act lessons like here and here. Vowing to do more in 2015!

9. Changing my assessment practices has been working great this year. Mastery of learning and Standards based assessment is my new norm.

10. I’ve always felt that I’m disorganized but the other day my senior class called me the most organized teacher in the school. Maybe they were being sarcastic?

What are your ten good things?

Logarithmic Warm Up

by Jon Orr

Our goal in Advanced Functions today was to graph y = log(x) and transformations of y = log(x). Here was what we did as a warm up/minds-on. Everyone started with a whiteboard and a device of some sort (SmartScreen Shot 2014-12-08 at 2.16.38 PMphones, iPads, tablets—I have access to a set of iPads for anyone without a device. This class being a grade 12 class….just about everyone has their own device).

I had them log into a PearDeck file I created.

I gave everyone in my class a number. Some got integers 1-20 and some got fractions 1/4 through 1.

My instructions:

1. Take your number, n, and find log(n). Write your number and log(n) as an ordered pair! (n, log(n))

I started the PearDeck presentation which showed them this slide……and gave them all a movable point.

Screen Shot 2014-12-08 at 2.14.53 PM

2. Move your point to the location of the ordered pair you have! So my students started moving their points around and on the projector screen we can see everyone’s points all at once in real time! So we are basically watching the creation of y = log(x).

IMG_2816

Sorry for the poor quality of pic…it was on the fly

You could see the looks on their faces as the graph was being created….pretty cool

From here we took a note on the properties of the function….then kept using PearDeck to analyze transformations of y = log(x). We saw Graphs then –> wrote equations and then saw equations –> drew graphs. We could do everything right in PearDeck so we could see all of our answers all of the time! PearDeck works through your Google account…..give it a try!

IMG_2817

 

 

My first Lesson with Pear Deck

by Jon Orr

PearDeck

Today we gave PearDeck a try. It was awesome….. so far here are the best features:

  1. When I asked students to: “Place a moveable dot on the point where the function gives a value of 40”. On their own screen they see just their dot, but on the projector screen they see everyone’s. — on this particular example the class was split on the two points where the volume is 40. This was awesome because we could all see that there are two solutions. I then asked “Now place a dot where the function gives a value greater than 40” Again they could see in live time everyone’s responses……but it was great for explaining that there are infinite solutions to that question (Our lesson goals were to solve inequalities using graphs)!!!
  2. It worked on all devices!!! It worked on their phones, iPads, tablets and computers…..this was great. I didn’t need to book a lab or for everyone to have an iPad with a specific app! It’s web/cloud based so they just need to access a webpage.
  3. Works with Google Drive….load files right from the Drive….it also saves to the drive. When kids join the class they are asked to sign into their google drive account. So on the dashboard I can see their name!

Some Feedback

Noticed that I had to switch between projector view and dashboard view so that we could see the entire class’s responses to the drawing questions. It would have been nice to see their drawings overlapped just like when you place a dot!
[update: there is a check box that allows the overlay of drawings!!]
More to come. Totally worth the subscription fee though!!