TEDxNYED - Dan Meyer - 03/06/10

Dan Meyer teaches high school math outside of Santa Cruz, CA, and explores the intersection of math instruction, multimedia, and inquiry-based learning. He received his Masters of Arts from the University of California at Davis in 2005 and Cable in the Classroom's Leader in Learning award in 2008. He currently works for Google as a curriculum fellow and lives with his wife in Santa Cruz, CA.

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• Category

  Education

[11889music]

This man is a hero. He should paid what the worthless professional athletes are paid in this country.

[deftoners]

I always felt that my math teachers in high school never gave you the base knowledge of something, you just slowly learned a formula and applied it to things.

I once raised my hand and ask "What would you ever use this for?" And his response was "To Teach Grade 11 math"

[212sexxi]

yu really bored me...

[Tarsinion]

A word problem uses a short text to describe a situation to you, instead of simply giving you an equation to solve. For example: "Ben has six Apples. Sarah eats two of them. How many apples does Ben have left?" would be a word problem, whereas "6 - 2 = x" would be the corresponding equation.

[Joanne Wilcox]

As someone who stopped seeing the point of Maths in middle school and with a son reaching his own conclusions, I know that what Dan Meyer says makes sense. Maths is in need of a serious overhaul and this sounds like sense. I am not a maths teacher but technology is replacing so much of the computation in mathematics surely we must focus on teaching and inspiring the real questions that we can ask maths to answer in our lives (like do I have time to make a cup of tea whilst the tank fills?)

[ProfJennyClark]

Fantastic! I don't teach math, but do have 'word problems' in the biology courses I teach. This was inspirational :) Thank you!!!

[Vidupa Samarasinghe]

Hello what does 'word problems' mean? '

[Xingjie Li]

For advanced math topics, Meyer's comments are not all correct. Math is in some sense like a language and we need know some basic rules.

[bananian]

we need to make a school where Ken Robinson is the principal, Dan Meyer as the math teacher, and homework is delivered through the Khan academy.

[TheLizardmonkey]

If a bad car accident, God forbid, happened outside the classroom, kids would start asking questions, would look to teacher for answers, there'd be hubbub and the teacher would be pairing kids up to comfort less understanding kids. OK. Rethink that and replace "bad car accident" with "everyday math problem" or "poem" - that's an effective lesson right there and a pen wasn't put to paper until well after.

[dcp2047]

I'm trying to do exactly this when teaching statistics at the university. The biggest trouble that I am finding is student's resistance to be creative when solving problem.

[Giooo1995]

but you all have to understand that it mostly on the children. if they don't give a shit (at all) then even an amazing, innovative method won't be super effective