Desmos Activites are a hit in Mahe, India

Say Math!!

Our host teacher here at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) Mahe is interested in ICT in the classroom. Rathnakaran Kozhukkunnon Othayoth (Rathna) was a Fulbright scholar at Indiana University for a semester, and he mentioned in previous conversations that he brought back Kahoots and Quizizz to his staff. Desmos activities seemed like a good fit. I was so excited when, on the way back from the airport, he pulled up the Desmos App on his phone!  It turns out Rathna has even done trainings across the country on ICT, and Desmos in particular.

WODB

Our teaching schedule was intense; essentially every class was excited to have a guest lecturer, so my Fulbright partner, Dr. Bill Clark and I bounced around doing demo lessons, him English and me Math for classes 6 to 12. Despite the fact that the JNV Mahe has a Smart Classroom, I also wanted to be able to share some of my favorite lower-tech teaching protocols with students and staff.

Students were excited by the 4 Fours game, a chalkboard only puzzle that delves deep into the all important order of operations. I also went through a few Which One Doesn't Belong on solving equations, and asked students to try a few Open Middle tasks. These two protocols end up with students not just solving rote content problems, but analyzing the structures of how and why the structure of mathematics "works."

SUCCESS!!

My cross-cultural mathematics moment: being a foreigner standing in front of a classroom of 60 students with a sliver of common language can be intimidating for both sides, but, with just a little prodding we were all communicating in Al-Jabra, just like Al-Kwarizmi would have wanted.

Then, on to the Samsung Smart Classroom, where I led a class 12 session of Parabolic Marbleslides. And, just like students I've worked with everywhere, the audible sounds of excitement at solving each puzzle moved the class forward. Checking the dashboard, many students continued working well after then end of the lesson to finish the puzzles, coming up with some great solutions.

I finished the day with a short workshop for a small group of math teachers in the Smart Classroom on Desmos Activities. Teachers were excited, but I could tell a bit overwhelmed.

While tech resources across India significantly varies, the JNV network of over 600 schools across the country all have access to these Smart Classrooms. I reached out to the gurus at Desmos to see there is an opportunity for Rathna to get the same kind of support for his community as I have as a Desmos Fellow. The good news is that Rathna and I already have plans to follow up when I get back so that he, too, can bring this great, free teaching tool to hundreds of millions of Indian students.