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Probability: Deck.Toys

I have just recently found the amazingness that is Deck.Toys.  If you've not yet discovered this very user-friendly digital learning tool, I'll give you a breakdown of my experience. Though I will let you in on my secret: three of us got together and created our first one as a team.  I truly hope you have colleagues that collaborate freely at your school like we do here!


Building a Deck.Toy starts with uploading a background.  It helps if you have a story line in your head first- I did not (but RJ did!).  Be prepared to create your own vocabulary study set; this is where many of the pre-loaded games pull from (for example, card sort, word search, matching, etc.).  You can also create hyperlinks to take you to outside resources such as Desmos, YouTube, G+, and so on.  


I'm sure we all want our students to perform rich tasks, so there are times when we need an AP-like problem in our activities.  In order to do this, you can use the "Slides with Questions" pin.  This will allow you to add any type of question you need your cherubs to complete.  Adding a lock to the slides is easy, this way students cannot move forward until they have opened the lock.  This is also where you can add a McAPPY (you know, the cousin to a FRAPPY: Multiple-Choice A. P. Problem Yay).  

Before assigning your new Deck.Toys to a class, I highly suggest going to Student Preview first and walking through your scenario.  I found a few mistakes on mine (no surprise there- I always do).  Once you've made any corrections, you're ready to assign. Simply give the students the appropriate address and they can jump in on the fun!

The photo to the right shows the teacher view as students are working through the scene.  This really helps seeing where groups/students are in real time.  Most of them stayed clustered together, but one student started lagging behind and I was able to approach him and help him out.  They also enjoyed the game aspect of racking up points as they moved through the tasks.  

If you are interested in using this Deck.Toy with your students, I did make it public; the title is "AP Statistics Probability Review: Part 1".  This activity includes: discrete, continuous, binomial, geometric, and combining random variables.  Students will need to know conditional probability and how to construct tree and Venn diagrams.  


If you have any questions, just let me know!

~SSB

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