Chapter 6 synopsis

EDTC 6340.60

Marivel  Correa

Chapter 6

Harnessing humor

This chapter deals with the use of humor while presenting in order to connect with the audience. Also, the use of humor when delivering content. I truly believe students learn when they are having fun, and when they enjoy a presentation/lesson. However, the teacher must establish boundaries to do so. In the last section of chapter 5, Using humor to connect, Burmark (2011) quotes comedian Victor Borge, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people,” so, if we want to get closer to our students, and we want them to acquire learning let´s integrate humor to our everyday teaching, and to take away the monotony of our classrooms. Burmark (2011) recommends humor in an educational setting to be “childlike exuberant,” full of surprises, so our students expect the unexpected, and, with historical perspective, so you or the students can look back and recall. According to Burmark (2011), in order to get your content across you need to get the audience´s attention, and to connect humor to content. Burmark (2011) states that if the presenter connects the point of the presentation to humor, the audience is more likely to remember it, and this is all because of the way our brains work. One very important thing to remember is that we are not comedians, but responsible educators who want students to remember the content we are presenting to them. So whatever it is that we are presenting it will go down better if, we connect that content to humor because we want our audience to stay awake. What do we want then? Well, according to Burmark, and I couldn’t agree more with her; we want to be able to connect those fun feelings to content that we want to hard-wire into our audience long-term memory. She recommends us to establish a humor zone [with positive humor] and to create joyful spaces so students feel safe and encouraged. If the audience is laughing that will definitely make the knowledge stick into their brains. Some of the recommendations are the use of cartoons, jokes, humorous/funny pictures or videos, and telling funny stories.

References

Burmark, L. (2011). They Snooze You Lose: The educator´s guide to succesful presentations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass