Educational App

The purpose of desmos is to help every student learn math and love learning math. They accomplish that goal by building products and partnerships. First, they built a best-in-class HTML5 graphing calculator, which millions of students around the world can use for free, including students who are blind or visually-impaired. This allows everyone to have easy access to a graphing calculator The partners Desmos have also embedded the calculator in digital curricula and on digital assessments so students spend less time worrying about technology and more time thinking about math. More recently they built hundreds of digital activities that cover grades 6-12 and expanding to other areas of math. Those activities take advantage of everything that makes computers special. They invite students to create their own mathematical ideas, rather than just consuming theirs. They encourage students to share their creations with each other, rather than with a grading algorithm. They distribute those activities for free on the website and through partnerships with curriculum publishers. After making those activities, they saw how much teachers wanted to create their own activities, rather than just assigning ours. So they created Activity Builder and Computation Layer to help teachers make the best activities for their students. With all of these products, they also partner with teachers to serve the students. Desmos is very educational because it is unlike a real calculator in the way that it accepts equations in any form and can also change scale very easily. The pros are that it is free and easy-to-use tool that gives students a visual way to understand expressions. The cons are that without significant help, less experienced students might struggle when things gets complicated. Desmos is an innovative calculator and simulations are a standout graphing option for inquiry-driven math. Desmos is designed for use by higher-ed students, K-12 students, teachers, professors, parents, math enthusiasts, video game designers, data scientists, and more. They also never allow third-party advertising on their websites or apps (both Desmos Tools and student.desmos.com). They never sell data collected on their websites or apps (both Desmos Tools and student.desmos.com), or allow third parties to collect data to be used for targeted advertising on Desmos or anywhere else.

New standards in mathematics promote students have a deeper conceptual understanding of mathematics and how they can be applied in the real world. Incorporating various forms of technology is an essential component of building this comprehension. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) holds the position that, “It is essential that teachers and students have regular access to technologies that support and advanced mathematical sense making, reasoning, problem solving, and communication. Effective teachers optimize the potential of technology to develop students' understanding, stimulate their interest, and increase their proficiency in mathematics. When teachers use technology strategically, they can provide greater access to mathematics for all students.” (NCTM 2011) Desmos provides teachers will an easily accessible technology that promotes inquiry-based learning to build mathematical understanding in student.