How I Want to Teach

dy/av : 002 : the next-gen lecturer from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

OK, so this Dan Meyer is a bit of a dork. I think he may even be dorkier than yours truly, but I sure would like to incorporate some of this into my classroom. I am a big fan of getting away from the text book. At 1:11 in the video he includes a snippet from one of his classroom discussions. Now, I'm sure there are text books that do a great job of describing this principle, but the way Dan teaches it--especially letting the students come up with the next question--seems like such a better way to approach learning than through a text book.

Dan also touches on how he liked to "wing it" as a teacher in his first few years, until he realized it just did not work out the way he expected it to--especially in math. I have not been too stressed about becoming a teacher because I think I can do a pretty good job of "winging it." I'm sure the unplanned will occur, but after watching this video I think "winging it" should be reserved for dire situations instead of having it be the norm.

I don't think I will carry around a camera with me everywhere I go, but I like how Dan includes relevant media ("How I Met Your Mother" is brilliant for the 6-12 grade range) to help support math concepts he is currently teaching in class. I would like to do the same in my class, and use my technological side to support my teaching of material. This video almost makes it seem like Dan relies too much on his digital projector. Instead of creating all of the video clips myself, I hope I will be able to find video clips online that help get my students interested--then I would help my students create the tough questions from those video clips.