AOK Section Meeting 2009 Banquet Speech

Arkansas-Oklahoma-Kansas - 2009 Section Meeting

Banquet Speaker

Corinne Manogue - Oregon State University

The Magic of Teaching

"Teaching is the art of leading students into a situation in which they can only escape by thinking." Dr. C. T. Bassoppo-Moyo

All of us have experienced the "teachable moment," both in ourselves and in our students. The magic of teaching, like all magic, arises from knowing how your audience will respond to particular cues and knowing how to direct the audience's attention where you want it. I will discuss some standard and some not-so-standard items from my physics teacher's bag-of-tricks. I'll also discuss some of the things that I have learned about how students respond to particular conditions and how these understandings can be used to promote the teachable moment. How can we best lead our students into situations that they can only escape by thinking? And how can we structure these situations so that a reasonable amount of thinking will result in productive learning rather than unproductive frustration.

Bio: Corinne Manogue (corinne@physics.oregonstate.edu) received her AB in Mathematics and Physics from Mount Holyoke College in 1977 and her PhD in Physics from the University of Texas in 1984. She did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Durham (England), and in India. She is now Professor of Physics at Oregon State University and Director of the Paradigms in Physics curriculum reform project (\texttt{http://physics.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki}). Her traditional research is in quantum gravity. She continues to be amazed and gladdened to find herself a physicist and wants as many of her students as possible to have the same opportunity.