For my final project, I will be focusing on how we can use educational tools to promote the digital skill of communication with our students. I will be focusing on the tool that I have blogged about this semester, and the tool that I feel I have established an expertise in, Desmos. Desmos was designed by a mathematics teacher and technology guru from Pittsburgh, PA named Dan Meyer. I will be taking you all, through a screen recording, through an activity that I did with my 8th grade mathematics class. I will talk about the ins and outs of the program and more importantly how it ignites conversation between students who may not speak a lot in class. I will be including anonymous quotes from these students themselves as well.
Why Desmos?
Digital media has taken away our students’ time spent having interpersonal conversations, but maybe we as educators need to change the way conversations occur in the classroom. The learning objective for this video will cover the essential question “How can we use technology to promote academic conversation between students?”. My target audience will be not only teachers but students as well. Desmos is primarily a math tool, so the focus would be on mathematics and therefore math teachers/students. More importantly, regardless of content area I want to relay the message on how we can use technology to maintain anonymity, interpersonal conversations, and academic progress all at the same time.
Hear it from Dan Meyer himself:
And a Podcast as well…
References:
1. Meyer, D. (2010, March). Math Class Needs A Makeover [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover?language=en
2. Upholt, B. (jav2015ascript:void(0), December). The Man Who Will Save Math. Retrieved April 27, 2019, from New Republic website: https://newrepublic.com/article/124750/man-will-save-math
3. Madda, M. J. (Producer). (2017, September 12). Questioning the Core Assumptions of Personalized
Learning With Math Blogger Dan Meyer. EdSurge On Air. Podcast retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-09-12-questioning-the-core-assumptions-of-personalized-learning-with-math-blogger-dan-meyer
EDT510 Digital Literacies 
Great Blog post, Jon. You did an excellent job of using the affordances of the medium to really promote the ideas you will present in your video. I’m intrigued and look forward to learning more.
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