Polypad is an award-winning digital math playground. Its interactive whiteboard incorporates shapes, colors, graphs, music and other tools to teach geometry, algebra, probability and statistics to middle and high school students.
Polypad's highly structured yet free-form design encourages students to explore on their own, while allowing educators extensive ability to personalize lessons.
Originally created by the founders of Mathigon, Polypad was acquired by Amplify in 2021.
What is Polypad?
Polypad is a powerful virtual math manipulative website designed for middle and high school students. Polypad requires no login or installation and runs on all devices and browsers.
With its clever drag-and-drop interface, multimedia tools, and colorful manipulatives, it's sure to appeal to even the most reluctant math students.
How does Polypad work?
Students and teachers can start using Polypad immediately without creating an account. However, creating a free account allows you to save and share with others and is therefore ideal.
Teachers can easily create their free account via email, Google account, Amplify, or Desmos Classroom. Student account creation is similar to teachers, with the exception of children under 13 years of age. Teachers can welcome these younger students to the platform by creating a free account in Desmos Classroom as described in student account creation.
The Polypad splash screen highlights several interesting features, such as the winners of the 2024 Polypad Art and Music Competition and testimonials from teachers and students. But if you're ready to start exploring, just click the Start Polypad button. Or, to learn more about each of the tools, click Tutorials, through which teachers can discover how to customize, assign, and share Polypad activities with students.
Polypad features a remarkably clean, easy-to-use interface and simple navigation, with a built-in help menu that makes it very easy to learn about each tool.
When you open Polypad for the first time, you're greeted with a blank virtual whiteboard with a bottom toolbar, a side toolbar, and a top-left main menu. Click any menu item on the left to expand its contents, view tooltips, or the help menu entry for that tool. To use any element, simply drag it onto the whiteboard, where intuitive toolbars let you easily change colors, draw, add equations, text and images or export it as a png, jpeg or svg image.
Polypad's main features are found in the Mosaics menu, where users will find a wide variety of interactive mathematical tools, in the categories of: geometry; numbers; fractions; algebra; probability and data; and games and applications.
Using the Activity Builder with Polypad
Polypad can be used as a standalone tool or as a collection of assignable activities and lessons. Amplify's Desmos Classroom Activity Builder allows educators to create multimedia assignable activities using a wide variety of tools for text, image creation, assessment, free response, and, of course, Polypad.
To create custom teaching activities, visit https://teacher.desmos.com, Create your free teacher account in Desmos Classroom or sign in to your existing account. Then navigate to Desmos activity generator. In the left menu, click Custom Activities >> Create a new activity. Give your new activity a name, select the viewing option (link or private), and briefly describe the activity. These attributes can be easily edited later, so feel free to use placeholder text until you're ready to share or assign the activity.
Now select Polypad (and/or other items) from the left menu to create your activity. When you drag the Polypad icon into the activity window, you've actually imported all of Polypad's functionality, allowing you to incorporate any of its tools into your lesson.
What are the best features of Polypad?
Polypad Tutorials
Mathigon YouTube Channel Hosts polipad tutorials which offer step-by-step guidance from the Polypad team on using their tools. When exploring on your own, you might miss the hidden gem of Hand Tiles or the fact that Hand Tiles interacts with other tools, like Algebra Balance Scale. These video tutorials demonstrate the extensive possibilities for teaching mathematics with Polypad.
Puzzles, Activities and Lesson Plans
Polypad's interactive tools are, in some ways, very simple: users can start experimenting right away without needing a detailed guide. However, for teachers who have never used Polypad, it can be a bit overwhelming to contemplate how best to implement them into the curriculum. Fortunately, Polypad's extensive set of pre-designed puzzles, activities, and lesson plans Offer expert guidance and ideas to use with students.
Assign activities
Once you've created your custom Polypad activity, you can assign it to members of your class.
First, create your class by choosing Classes from the left menu, then Add New Class. An invitation code will be automatically generated for students. If you already have classes in Google Classroom, you can simply import them from there.
When you open your activity, click the desired option in the Assign menu.
How much does Polypad cost?
Polypad is completely free. It's also free for teachers and students to create a Desmos Classroom account and use Activity Builder to create, assign, or complete activities.
Top Polypad Tips and Tricks
Polypad Games and Apps
Polypad games and apps include chess, logic and computing, coins, clocks, dominoes, and best of all, music. Simply drag the keyboard into the workspace and start playing and recording. Not sure what to do? Open the Music & Sonification help menu for guidance on using the tools.
Make your shapes sing
Polypad polygons not only have bright colors, but also incorporate musical tones that represent its propertiesincluding vertices, perimeter, area, angles and fractions.
Ask for help
The built-in Help menu is fully integrated into the Polypad workspace. Simply click the question mark on any tile to instantly see the tile summary, examples, and lesson ideas.
Accessibility
For students using adaptive technologies, such as screen readers, keyboard shortcuts allow them to fully participate in the lesson.
Image 1 of 2
<div style="overflow-x:hidden” class=”inline-gallery__items”>
What's next for Polypad?
Polypad used to be part of Mathigon.ogram. Both Mathigon and Desmos Classroom were acquired by Amplifywhich is in the process of merging and integrating the three products. tech & Learning is following developments and will update readers on the integration of these valuable teaching tools.
