What’s the question here?
Posts Tagged ‘Dan Meyer’
Green Lake 2011: Dan Meyer – Math Teacher Makeover
Dan Meyer is in Green Lake Wisconsin!
Dan is talking about the challenges that teachers face in the 21st century. Is teaching a legitimate profession? What value can we add to the world of Khan Academy and Ruby The Robot? What can we do that the “robots” can’t? What areas can we control and do much better at?
Dan discussed the water problem which is simply a graph showing water consumption vs time during a huge sporting event. Then a huge roll of tickets. What are the interesting (perplexing) things about them? How long is the roll end to end? How much are those tickets worth? Why does the water graph spike when it does?
Confusion is damaging but perplexity is crucial.
Non-perplexing problems are based on a false premise. Like maximizing a soccer field so it turns out the maximum is a square. Soccer fields are not square! Kids start to wonder what universe we are in. Non-perplexing problems are also problems that only a math teacher would think to ask. Like how we could use special right triangles to calculate the correct bandana size for your dog. If we don’t stop doing this – “the robots are going to eat our lunch.”
To create perplexity:
Act 1: Reveal the conflict quickly, visually, and with few words. Simply show a video or picture. That picture or video should set the hook at the beginning of the class and drive the questions.
Act 2: Overcome obstacles and Develop the tools.If Act 1 is done correctly, then this part should motivate the search for new tools. Act 1 has to create the need for new tools. This is the part that the robots can help out with. The kids can go to Khan and watch 10 videos to learn their new tools. Too many times we give the kids the tools before they even know they need them.
Act 3: Resolve the conflict and set up a sequel. If the problem is set up visually, then reveal the solution visually. We need some sort of external validation – not the teacher manual. If you started with a video, then show the end of the video to reveal the answer. If you want to know if you were right about the number of tickets, then reveal the label on the other side of the roll. A possible sequel might be: There are 1,000,000 tickets – describe that roll.
How often do we do this? Maybe once a week to establish the fact that this kind of thinking is what we value. This can be done with anything. As simple as adding a leading coefficient to a trinomial. We need a new tool and now we have to find it.
Dan’s challenge: find a picture or a video (1 minute or less) so that without any words the students see the conflict and generate questions. Send it to Dan and he’ll shoot you back a question. Here is one that Dan shared at the end of the session:
[anyqs] Stacking Dolls from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.