Dan Meyer

Total 1628 Posts

I'm Dan and this is my blog. I'm a former high school math teacher and current head of teaching at Desmos. He / him. More here.

Lawn Photos!

By Dan Meyer • July 8, 2008 • 10 Comments

Oh, man, awesome. You would’ve found these installations at [redacted] last week.

If I taught science, I’d toss this photo on the wall during one particular unit and let ’em fight over the method. Any readers know how this thing happened? I’ll toss the answer into the comments if y’all founder too long.

[Hint: the answer does not involve a really really tiny lawnmower.]

BTW: a month into summer and I’m totally off my game. Lemme just say that these lawns sculptures involve photosynthesis in kind of a crucial way.

dy/av : 004 : preview

By Dan Meyer • July 8, 2008 • 15 Comments

My first two years teaching I felt guilty drawing a paycheck. – me, the first two seconds of tomorrow’s episode.

Motivating Questions

How have your professional skills as a teacher transferred into and improved your personal life?I suppose parenting and spousing are the obvious entry points to this one but I know nothing about either.

Clever Circles

By Dan Meyer • July 6, 2008 • 3 Comments

Like yesterday, buying gas. I started spinning this credit card advertisement and something about it didn’t make sense. I stared at it, cocking my head back and forth like a magpie. Then I saw the two different radii and laughed at myself.

A year ago, that would’ve ended it, but nowadays – I don’t know. Even during the summer, I can’t turn this thing off, this thing which I tried to illustrate in my second vodcast. I grabbed my Canon PowerShot and shot some video. Then I dumped it into Adobe AfterEffects and added some clarifying visuals.

I’ll play it someday next year at some moment when I’d like them to scratch their heads over how one circle has more circles inside of it. I’ll ask them to make their own, maybe, or maybe we’ll just enjoy the moment, a moment when we brought the world into our math class with video.

Clever Circles from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

Awesome

By Dan Meyer • July 4, 2008 • Comments Off

Tracy W, on making sure your stick/carrot is really a stick/carrot:

The [student] gets to define what is a positive reinforcer and what is a negative reinforcer, not the [teacher].

Lots more where that came from in the most recent episode preview.

Amok

By Dan Meyer • July 4, 2008 • 1 Comment

Michelle Crisafulli:

Our students know more about technology and how to use it than we educators and administrators can even imagine. Let’s stop kidding ourselves; we will never catch up! And as each new generation arrives at our classroom door, we are yet further and further behind. So, I say, put the monkeys in charge of the zoo!

~~My comment there was deleted, so tread lightly and all that.~~

BTW: My comment was exhumed from the moderation pile.

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