The names used in anonymize mode in the teacher dashboard are now driven by subject! Anonymize mode in the teacher dashboard was a beloved feature of Desmos Classroom, assigning notable mathematicians to replace student names in the teacher dashboard with the goal of supporting class discussions and allowing students to see themselves as mathematicians. As our platform grew to support other subjects and grades this feature needed to evolve too.
The platform will now use the subject on activities to pull different lists for anonymize mode:
- Math activities will use a list of notable mathematicians
- Science activities will use a list of notable scientists
- Literacy activities will use a list of characters and figures from our literacy programs
- For any activity that does not have a subject tagged we will use a combined list of all of the above.
Finally, we know these names have clear benefits but also downsides in the classroom. We’ve received feedback that these names can be a distraction from the content of the lesson. To support some flexibility, we have also added a feature where teachers have the option in activity editing to turn on a setting to “Use animal names instead […] in anonymize mode” which will override the subject names and use animals for the anonymize feature instead.