Mar 21 2009
Lights, Camera, Teach!
It’s only one week until Murders R Us is coming to the Brown Grand Theatre to host “Who Dunnit to Elvis?”. If you read my Happy Birthday Elvis post last January, you know I’m a huge Elvis fan. The show is audience participation live theatre and I’m in it playing the role of Elvis #2. The interesting thing is that we have one rehearsal day before the performance. We don’t have a script, and at this point don’t even really know much about the story line. It is a little daunting for me, but I actually think it is great teacher training. Many times a classroom teacher has to “improv” when things don’t quite go as planned.
I just finished co-authoring a paper for the National Society for Engineering Educators conference this summer about using digital video to enhance student learning. (It will be published by ASEE so I can’t share it here.) While researching, I learned some interesting things about how acting training improves memory. I even read one article in which Alan Alda used improv acting with engineering students to help their own understanding of engineering.
I would like to learn more about this idea of using acting & improvisation to help teach engineering. First, I’ll need to get some help with improvisation games, and how they can be related to the engineering concepts in my classes.
I’m really looking forward to next week’s play at the Brown Grand. Performing on stage really forces me out of my comfort zone and although I couldn’t prove it, I believe it helps me with my teaching by helping me to think on my feet.
I’m wondering if any readers of this blog have similar experiences and activities that you do which on the surface seem to have nothing to do with your profession, but actually do help you be the best you can be?
2 responses so far
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Bill.. I’ve done a lot of improvisation games and have several books on the subject if you want to borrow them. The best thing would be to do some of them.. Maybe we can designate some time when we can invite some others and actually do some of them since it’s so much more vivid to do them. Did we do the advertising agency game for tryouts the first time we did the murder mystery? I think that would be a great one for engineers and brainstorming. A big concept of improvisation is “Yes and” which means you can only build on to what others have offered. Too often we try to negate which stops ideas. Improv is a lot of fun but is a great learning tool. I wrote my master’s paper (years ago) on using creative drama techniques (like improv) as methodologies to teach cooperative learning.
Awesome! I’m looking forward to learning more.