Online math practice is something that teachers have been working toward for a few years now. Incorporating some of the main websites such as Khan academy, Desmos and IXL allow students to practice within the classroom and also at home if they have the resources. But there are more interactive websites outside of these main three. One website that I learned about in my internship was called prodigy. The website has students going on a quest like activity and in order to advance in the quest they must answer math problems. I went to their website and found an article called “ 7 Reasons Prodigy is Right for Your School.” To me, one of the big positives of using prodigy is that it has a curriculum that is aligned to the content standards. This is great so when students are going over these activities, they are still creating building blocks to go off of other lessons. Another great thing that prodigy does is that it has differentiated and personalized learning. The article states that they have a feature that allows teachers to edit their templates for them to create specific lessons or differentiation and even if teachers do not use this feature, the prodigy program will differentiate following the standards. The final piece that I like about this website is that it uses the data collected from student work and turns them into progress reports that help track the student development and growth.
Going back to the first three, they all do still have their positive aspects and they must be doing a few things right if they are the main three I see teachers using. One that I have been looking into lately is Desmos. One of the common things I have noticed as I was researching about desmos is that most teachers use it for the graphing calculators as they can cost upwards of $200 each and these online ones are free. Although this is a great resource of desmos, they offer many other things through the teacher activities. A blog about Desmos in the Math Classroom discusses the ways that one teacher utilizes desmos in their classroom. They discuss how they use Desmos to easily solve the students conjectures, bring in outside elements such as art, and even how desmos allows them to have a more social classroom. I think my favorite part about this blog post is that the teacher wrote about how desmos activities got the students excited to be a part of class. One of the students had gone on a vacation but still wanted to participate in the class activity, so the teacher sent the student the access code and this student was able to participate even when they were not in the classroom. Having students who are excited to learn and using a platform that promotes that will help create a welcoming learning environment within the classroom.