What's New at Desmos?

December 2021

• We made Card Sort more delightful with new group styles and expand/collapse behavior.

November 2021

• Students now receive an alert on their homepage that takes them directly to the activity with the most recent unread feedback.

October 2021

• You can now select multiple student responses at once by selecting the checkboxes above their work in the Teacher View. You will be able to send feedback to all students selected, present selected students work right from the Teacher View, or save them as an album in Snapshots.
• We updated our greeting page for student activities to show the signed in account name. If working with someone else, students can choose “Add their name” to show their partner’s name in that activity.
• Text to speech (Beta) is available for students to turn on in the Accessibility Settings area in the student sidebar (click the hamburger in the top left corner of an activity). Once enabled, students will be able to hear the text in any note on a screen and adjust the playback speed.

September 2021

• Now when viewing the unit collection for any grade of the middle school curriculum, you can switch to any other grade in the header.
• When adding a video to your activity, you can now upload video captions to ensure the video is accessible for your students. Learn more.
• When editing activities, use the radians/degrees toggle to change the default angle measurement for all calculations in an activity, including math inputs, tables, graphs, and Computation Layer. Learn more.

August 2021

• On the teacher and student periscope view in dashboards, you can now select “Show Correctness” to see the correctness for each response on that screen.
• Now when the CL editor is opened, the component/screen documentation will show up by default in a side panel.
• We released a new and improved Student Homepage! Students will see 10 most recent activities with the option to view more instead of seeing every activity at once. They can also filter activities by class. 
• Co-teachers now have the option to remove themselves from Desmos Classes.

July 2021

• We updated our list of notable mathematicians used when anonymize mode is turned on from the teacher dashboard. Learn more
• The way that math is read when using a screen reader has been updated to speak shorter forms of common numeric fractions and exponent.
• Teachers can now edit the date when the invitation code is set to expire for Desmos Classes and single sessions. From the invitation code modal, choose “Change Date”.
• Fixed bugs related to Penny Circle, Polygraph, miniscreen layout on activity pages, and error messages for snapshots.

June 2021

• Students can now use Braille displays to read and write equations in Desmos activities. Learn more.
• We updated the flow for students joining classes and single sessions to make them more secure. Learn more.
• Teachers now have the option to require that students log in when joining activity sessions created with a single session code.
• Teachers can now organize activities and collections, including the ability to pin collections to the sidebar. Learn more.
• Teachers can now view the activity history for a single student in a class by going to the Student History Page from the class roster. Learn more.
• The sidebar for logged in students doing in activity now has links to the three most recent activities with unread feedback.

May 2021

• Teachers can now filter the Activity History page by activity. In the dot-dot dropdown next to a specific session select “Filter by Activity” to see all sessions for that activity.
• Teachers can now switch to different activity sessions from the teacher dashboard. From the dropdown in the upper left choose “Switch Dashboard” to quickly jump to another session of the same activity.
• Sessions created via single session code will now show up in the Dashboard History for users added to the dashboard by the primary teacher.
• Added resetOnChange as a sink for table components in Computation Layer for Activity Builder.
• Collaborators on activities now have the option to remove themselves from the activity by choosing “Remove this activity” from the dropdown. This option replaces the “Delete this activity” option for all collaborators except the original activity author.
• Added support for rich text to the coverText sink in Computation Layer for Activity Builder.

April 2021

• Teachers can now hide screens of an activity from the teacher dashboard by clicking the dropdown on the screen they want to remove and clicking “Hide Screen”. Hidden screens will be completely removed from the student experience of the activity and you can “Unhide” a screen at any time to add it back.
• The logged-out homepage of teacher.desmos.com has a new look!
• Authors in Activity Builder now have the option of turning on/off the different sketch tools for sketch components.
• Authors in Activity Builder can now choose between a few different layout options for multiple choice and checkboxes.
• Added a new method, scaleThicknessBy, for sketch components in Computation Layer for Activity Builder.
• Updated the initialTool sink for sketch components in Computation Layer to allow for math and text as initial tools selected for students.
• Authors in Activity Builder can now add bullets to Teacher Tips.

March 2021

• We updated our Computation Layer Documentation page to make it easier to navigate and include more examples.
• Authors in Activity Builder can now include hyperlinks, italics, and bold font in activity descriptions.
• Added saveOnChange as a sink to graph components in Computation Layer for Activity Builder.
• We updated the live preview in Polygraph game play to instead show an animating “...” while students are typing.
• Added showExplain as a sink for multiple choice components in Computation Layer for Activity Builder.
• Fixed bugs related to the color selector on collections, Transformation Golf, images uploaded to the graphing calculator component by students, and Google Classroom imported classes.
• Graph and sketch thumbnails of student responses in the teacher dashboard now show more detail, including labels.
• Teachers can now share individual activity dashboards with co-teachers and other colleagues. Learn more.
• Students will now be able to select from 3 line thickness options in sketch.

February 2021

• We added keyboard shortcuts to sketch components in activities.
• Students will now see two new options on sketch inputs in activities: text and math. Selecting these tools will allow students to type in text boxes on top of the sketch. These options are enabled by default and can be disabled in the sketch component editor.
• Central Park and Function Carnival have been rebuilt using Activity Builder, allowing teachers to copy and edit these activities to make their own adjustments.
• New Desmos Labs feature - you can turn on the Student Image Upload feature (currently in Beta) to allow students to upload images in activities.
• Teachers can now deactivate invitation codes for Desmos Classes and single activity sessions. For security, codes now have a shorter default active period, but teachers can reactive inactive codes at any time to let more students join. Learn more.
• We officially announced the Desmos 6–8 Math Curriculum! Learn more.

January 2021

• Tile Pile and Water Line have been officially retired. You can run a non-saving student version of the activities from museum.desmos.com.

September 2020

• The assign button on activities now opens a modal to choose which classes to assign the activity to, allowing you to assign the same activity to multiple classes at once.
• Google Classroom linked classes now have posting preferences so that you can choose to post immediately to Google Classroom, post as a draft to Google Classroom, or not post at all.
• The teacher dashboard for activities assigned to a Desmos Class now lists all students in the class roster in the Summary tab. This will allow you to see at a glance who still needs to join the activity.
• Co-teachers for classes can now see all the dashboard links for activities assigned to that class from their History page.
• You can now easily share a dashboard link with your co-teachers from the teacher dashboard. From the dropdown next to the activity name, choose “Share Dashboard”.
• Teacher.desmos.com and student.desmos.com are now available in Korean, and Estonian.
• We released Desmos Classes as a way to organize your classes and assign activities to a group of students without needing a code for each activity. Desmos Classes can also be imported from your existing classes in Google Classroom.
• Our note component in activity builder now supports rich text formatting.
• Co-teachers can now see and use the entire classroom conversation tool-kit.

August 2020

• Our Written Feedback feature for giving students feedback in activities has been released from Labs and is now turned on for everyone. Learn more.
• Videos in Activity Builder now start with sound on by default to better support distance learning.
• You can now collaborate with you colleagues on activities. Learn more.
• Added a Getting to Know Each Other activity to teacher.desmos.com to help you and your students get off to a great start this school year.

July 2020

• In Activity Builder, we split our graph component into two distinct components - Graph and Graphing Calc. This change allows activity authors to add a large Graph to a screen that will have the expression list and graph controls hidden.
• In activities with evaluation on math inputs or table cells, we now show the “≈” symbol when the complete evaluation cannot be shown.
• In the teacher dashboard for activities with a Card Sort, we now default to “Show Answer Key” turned off.
• We removed the fullscreen button on the student side of activities due to severe bugs that feature was causing on iPad. We are working to bring back this feature in places that can support it, but have removed it everywhere for now as a precaution.
• In Activity Builder, we added a button to the Graph component to “Convert to Sketch” and a button to the Sketch component to “Convert to Graph” to easily go back and forth between those components.
• Classroom Activities are now available in Italian and Dutch.
• Added timestamps to our feedback feature in activities.
• Added visual indicators to the teacher dashboard for activities to show in the Summary view which screens have unread feedback on them (green triangle) and which screens have feedback that students have read (gray triangle).

June 2020

• We updated our home page. Quickly find our math tools, activities, and other information about Desmos. Students can also jump easily into activities right from the homepage.
• We launched a re-designed Activity Builder, which allows for much more flexibility in the kinds and quantity of components you can add to a screen. Our Computation Layer scripting language is on by default so you can now copy and edit many, many more activities than you could previously.
• The link for students to join activities is now shorter and a little more human readable (e.g. https://student.desmos.com/join/[code]) and continues to take students directly to the student greeting page for the activity.

May 2020

• We now export labels in PNGs, SVGs, and in different places throughout our activities.

April 2020

• We reduced the amount of students send and receive. On average, students are now sending 65% less data to the server, receiving 35% less data from the server, and making 45% fewer requests to the server
• You can choose from three languages in our new language picker at teacher.desmos.com – French, Russian, and Spanish.
• We released a new activity: Faucet.
• You can add co-teachers to your account who can see activity dashboards.

March 2020

• Schools started closing around the United States and we added a lot of new features and content to support teachers. Learn more.
• We released Written Feedback as a beta.
• You can embed a scientific calculator in activities.
• We created collections of distance-friendly activities.
• You can copy and paste screens from other people's activities straight from the preview.
• We created a set of "Starter Screens" to help you get your own activities started.

February 2020

• Sort options in the dashboard! You can now sort student names by the time they entered the activity, by their name, or randomly.
• New activity releases!
  • Balance the Scale
  • Classy Cats
  • Guess My Rule

January 2020

• Student activities now have a fancy new design!
• We released new activities!
  • Sketchy Dilations
  • Parallel Lines

December 2019

• We released Turtle Crossing.

November 2019

• Check out our upgrades to collections, including a whole bunch of middle school statistics activities.
• We released Parallel Lines – an activity that asks students to notice patterns in parallel lines.

October 2019

• We released three new fantastic activities:
  • Turtle Time Trials
  • Puzzling It Out
  • The Solar System, Test Tubes, and Scientific Notation

September 2019

• Students can now upload images into full-screen graphs in Activity Builder. (This will be extremely useful for all of you folks who assign graph art projects!)

July 2019

• We made major re-designs to our Transformation Golf activity!
• We added a new animation mode – "play indefinitely."

May 2019

• You can now follow other people's collections!

April 2019

• Utah and Iowa include Desmos on their state math exam.
• We released an Ordered List component for Activity Builder.
• We released Collections! Teachers can now create collections of their favorite activities.
• We released Photo Snapshots! Teachers can add photos from their cameraphone to the snapshots gallery.

March 2019

• Our embosser exports to both 11 x 11 and 8.5 x 11 paper sizes. Happy embossing!

January 2019

• Now we have export options for embossers for teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired.

September 2018

• Images are bigger in Activity Builder when they're the only element on the screen.

May 2018

• Card Sort for everyone! Card Sorts are no longer an opt-in feature in labs, but available by default in our editor

April 2018

• You now have access to our Computation Layer scripting language for Activity Builder, which until this point has been private. ( More here.)
• Our class codes now have six characters instead of four. We also make your class codes inactive after six months. (You can re-activate them if you need to – no problem.) This is all an effort at reducing the odds someone will stumble into your Desmos activity and your students' data.

February 2018

• New activities: The Fraction Challenge and The Decimal Challenge.
• We updated two activities with our latest Challenge Creator technology: Pomegraphit and Land the Plane.

January 2018

• You can randomize the options in multiple choice questions in Activity Builder.

November 2017

• If you edit an activity, we'll post a notice in your list of class codes so you know which ones belong to the older version.

October 2017

• We released three new activities: Parabola Slalom, Match My Picture [ blog post], and Translations with Coordinates. We developed a new feature called Challenge Creator, which lets students to create challenges for other students. We added it to three activities – Parabola Slalom, Laser Challenge, and Point Collector: Lines – with many more to come.

September 2017

• We upgraded our entire activity pool to offer more automatic feedback to teachers.
• We released our hot new free activity: Transformation Golf. ( Behind the scenes.)
• Our new teacher dashboard is officially released!

August 2017

• We're working on updates to a new teacher dashboard at teacher.desmos.com. Give it a try - we'd love your feedback.

March 2017

• Text and math type can now co-exist in Activity Builder. Hooray!

February 2017

• Using Teacher Pacing, teachers can now restrict students to multiple screens.

January 2017

• We've added two new bundles to teacher.desmos.com: Conics and Transformations.

December 2016

• You can now import a graph into an Activity Builder activity by copying and pasting the url into the first expression line of a graph component.

November 2016

• Videos in Activity Builder - Play, pause, and more with the addition of videos in our classroom activities.
• We've added a Multiple Choice option for Activity Builder activities.

September 2016

• Teacher Pacing and Pause - Ring in the school year with our newest additions to the teacher dashboard. Find out what we love about these features.
• Classcode Screen - Simply open the dashboard and the student instructions will automatically be projected.

August 2016

• Teacher Account Settings - We've added the ability to update your username, reset your password, and email subscription preferences. Head over to teacher.desmos.com and click on your username in the upper right hand corner.

July 2016

• teacher.desmos.com - We given our teacher site received quite a facelift including the addition of bookmarks, bundles (!), and the brand new Desmos Labs.

May 2016

• Sketch - Have students record their informal thinking with our newest component. Check out one way to use it in one of our Desmos Teaching Faculty's newest activities, Sketchy Graphs.
• Hide Students - By popular demand! You can now hide unruly students from the teacher dashboard and find the account information associated with each student.

April 2016

• Student Side Math Text - Student math responses can now be automatically formatted to beautiful math type.

March 2016

• Tips for Teachers - Give the gift of context to your fellow teachers. It's now possible to view screen-by-screen advice from the original author of activities in Activity Builder. You can also add tips for other teachers to your own authored activities.
• Math Text - It's now possible to format math text in Activity Builder. Say goodbye to ^ and hello to actual exponents!

February 2016

• Anonymize Student List - We've added the ability to anonymize your student list. Click the Anonymous Icon and your class list will show a list of famous mathematician names (only available in Activity Builder).
• Student Preview - You can now preview a student screen in the teacher dashboard. Try it out when discussing a question screen with students or exploring a graph together!
• New Activities - Fresh crop of activities have been added to the search pool: Who's Faster, Roll the Dice, Intro to Rational Functions, String Art 2.0, and Modeling Perimeter and Area.

January 2016

• Invisible Folders - Hide folders from students in Activity Builder graph screens. Check out an example of its implementation in our updated Match My Line activity.
• Graph Exhibits - Graphs can be now be added to question and text screens in Activity Builder.