I know this isn’t precisely relevant to CL scripting, but I was wondering if people are still able to create classrooms, have students join, and have students see the activities assigned to their class. I’ve been having very frustrating hiccups at every step, and it’s been taking Amplify several days to get back to me when I open a ticket. I’m finally to the point where I have classes that students can log in and join, but the activity I’ve assigned still doesn’t show up. I also don’t see any view where I can see what activities have been assigned to each class.
Is there any advice or assistance anyone can offer? Or even commiseration? I’ve relied heavily on Desmos activities to make my classroom engaging, and it would kill my soul to have to go back to all paper all the time.
In terms of seeing what activities you have assigned, if you click on the home icon after you log in (top left), then you will see My Stream. If you click the see all link, you will see a class filter dropdown on the left and that lets you see all the activities you’ve assigned to a class. I hope that helps a bit.
I am running into a similar problem; it is not posting from Amplify to Google Classroom when I assign it. If it does make it to GC the students are not able to open the link. It made it sound like a filter problem on the error message to students but our district IT said it is not blocked.
I’m seeing that there can sometimes be discrepancies between Amplify classroom and Google classroom that can cause some of these issues, and course of action for this situation would require a support ticket. Sorry I don’t have a more DIY answer.
To be clear, my difficulty is not that I misunderstand how to create or administer classes. I’ve successfully used Desmos classes for several years. My problem is that the functionality for classes that was there last year is now either missing or broken.
I cleared it with my school’s IT department, and they said we were approved to have students use Amplify with Google SSO. We don’t use Google Classroom at my school, so I’m just creating classes inside Amplify. I created empty classes and assigned one activity. Here’s the ongoing saga of problems:
I asked my first period to log in with Google and then join the class. They weren’t even able to log in with Google–it just took them to a page saying, “Your account isn’t fully set up. Please contact Amplify’s Customer Support.” I opened a ticket with Amplify, and they escalated my ticket for some reason, and then hassled me about what email I have my teacher account under. (I use my personal email because I’ve left previous schools). They never told me what was wrong with the student logins; it was just mysteriously fixed a week later.
I again attempted to have my students join my Amplify class (but this time 5th period, because we’d already spent the struggle time in 1st period). A student was able to log in and successfully join the class, but the assignment didn’t show up for her. We went to the “To do” tab, and there was nothing there either. My class and I again abandoned ship and I opened another ticket. Amplify Support told me they’d looked at her account, and the activity was there under “Past Work because the student did not complete it on the day it was assigned.” ! Really? I went back and tried assigning another activity and realized it now has a “Schedule Date” and a “Due Date,” and apparently activities disappear from student dashboards according to one of these dates. Good to know, I guess.
Today, I once again had my 1st period attempt to log in to Amplify with Google SSO. My poor 1st period. No one was able to get in–the login page just hung and eventually crashed. Sometimes students would get to the running hamster image, which was extra hilarious as it slowed down. Sad hamster . It’s not like I have thousands of students. I have 24. Desmos used to be able to handle that load at 8 AM on a Friday.
We are now three weeks into school, and my students still cannot access my Desmos activities. Additionally, Amplify has buried the place where you can see which activities you’ve assigned to which classes, and you can no longer add co-teachers (the site claims that’s “coming soon”). Amplify’s help page claims a live chat, but it’s nowhere to be found, and I have a suspicion it’s reserved for customers with pay subscriptions, as my tickets are going days without communication. I am just eternally frustrated at this point, because it is severely disrupting my lessons to not have this resource available. I’ve been a huge Desmos promoter in the past, but Amplify is ruining it for me and my students.
Unsure if anyone else has all of this hassle and trouble using Amplify classroom… it is quite buggy for me especially when I log in to test my activities as a student.
As of today my students are unable to login to complete Activities. Very chaotic first day for us.
Unfortunately I’ve had to advise teachers to ditch Amplify Activities entirely until this is resolved.
I’ve been dealing with the same frustrations, so I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned that might help. Amplify seems to be moving toward contracting directly with school districts, and that has changed how teachers and students can use Desmos activities:
Student accounts: Students can’t use their school email addresses to join your classroom anymore. They need to sign up with their personal email address.
Assigned activities: Amplify removed the teacher view that shows which activities you’ve assigned unless you actually created the activity yourself. The workaround is to make a copy of any activity you like so that it appears in your “My Stuff” tab. That way, you’ll always have it saved.
Tracking activities: They also took away the ability to see what activities are tied to each class period. A good habit is to copy the link to every activity you assign and save them in a Word or Google Doc for future use. Otherwise, you won’t be able to revisit what your students did. I have a picture of what I mean below.
Sharing & searching: It’s also much harder now to find old Desmos activities that other teachers and Demos Creators built through a Google search like we could in the past. Sharing links with other teachers through Docs or Word is more reliable than relying on Amplify’s “collections” feature. I honestly wouldn’t trust “Collections” too much—they seem to be pushing toward selling pre-packaged courses and content.
Bugs & quirks: There are still some glitches. For example, when you assign a lesson, it may appear in the student “To Do” list sometimes and in “Past Work” other times. Tests and quizzes are still possible through Activity Builder, but they require some workarounds (I shared some tips on youtube if you search “How To Make A Test Using Desmos (Amplify) Classroom 2025”
All in all, I’d say it’s about 90% of what it was before this fall. Not perfect, but still a powerful resource if you know the limitations going into the 2025 school year. Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback Jermaine! And thanks to everyone on this thread. I’ll forward this post to our platform support teams and make sure we get some eyes on it.
I’m closing this topic for preservation. If you have anything else you’d like to add, feel free to start a new topic.
. It’s not like I have thousands of students. I have 24. Desmos used to be able to handle that load at 8 AM on a Friday.