Desmos Classroom products (Classroom Activities, Activity Builder, Computation Layer and the Desmos Math 6-A1 Program) are now part of Amplify Education. For the most current Desmos Classroom help center resources please visit Amplify’s help center.
The most accurate version of this specific article can be found here.
Desmos activities come equipped with a powerful conversation toolkit built into the teacher dashboard that helps teachers encourage mathematical discourse and collaborative thinking in their classes.
Pause
Pause allows you to gather student attention—whether for a brief announcement, or a class discussion.
Keep an activity paused for as long (or short) as you want. When you're ready for students to continue, press the Pause button again to resume the activity.
With Pause activated, students can see their current screen, but not interact with the activity at all.
Pacing
Pacing allows you to lead students through part of an activity one screen or one section at a time.
To activate, click the pacing icon. Then select the screen (or screens) you'd like to gather your students on. They'll automatically "snap" to that location in the activity, with navigation outside of that range temporarily disabled.
Once activated, you'll see clear indicators for what screens your students may access. You can edit or extend that range, or even disable pacing, with a single click.
Hide Screens
Are you running out of time in class? Or do you want to refine an activity to better suit your students’ needs? You can hide screens from students by clicking the three dots on the screen’s thumbnail. This allows for non-sequential teacher pacing.
Notice that the screens automatically renumber themselves when one is hidden. Change your mind? Simply click Unhide and students will be able to access the screen again.
Anonymize
When using Desmos activities, we want students to feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the teacher and the class. To support this, teachers can turn on anonymize mode.
Students’ names are swapped out and replaced by the names of famous mathematicians, with a special emphasis towards mathematicians of diverse backgrounds. You can also shuffle students through different anonymized mathematicians by clicking the three dots next to their names!
Edit Student Names
Need to update student names to match your gradebook? Press the three dot menu and select "Edit name for this class" to change a student name for this class. This will update the student name in all other dashboards for this class, and you can restore the previous name at any time from the class roster. This feature is not available for single session codes.
Hide Students
Are multiple logins from a single student showing up? Or maybe an inappropriate name or comment? Press the three dots menu and select Hide Student to hide a student—name and responses—from the class. Don’t worry - hidden students are still able to complete the activity!
