To bring the school year to an end, my middle school math students at Voyageur Academy and I teamed up with the school’s music teacher, Mr. Vercellino, to make a parody to the Bruno Mars song “That’s What I Like“. The song teaches about “Equations”; I hope you enjoy the video! Lucky for Math, that’s what I like 🙂
Executive Director
Email: mc@skule.org
Rohen Shah is the 2018 National Tutor of the Year, and the CEO of DiagKNOWstics Learning. A former high school math teacher in Detroit, he decided to dedicate himself to #MakeLearningFun after creating a few viral educational rap songs as MC SKULE. Prior experiences also include managing a national tutoring company (Far From Standard) and teaching courses at the University of Michigan. He has collaborated with Chuck Alkazian, Rupan Bal, Voyageur Academy, and Crissman Elementary to make songs that help people learn. He has been featured in the Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor News, MLive, NBC’s Channel 4, among others. Through SKULE.org he continues making more educational rap songs. He performs these songs along with IV Green at schools around the country, helping other teachers integrate music into their own classrooms.
Creative Director
Email: amber@skule.org
A “former class clown” who loves art and fashion, Amber Koch decided to dedicate herself to #MakeLearningFun after she realized she’s basically just a really tall kid being obsessed with unicorns and pizza. She loves to learn and has her Bachelor’s degree in Radiation Therapy. She also developed the I.V. Green character, aiming to help kids learn about environmental issues and science. (trivia: IV stands for “Inspirational Voice”). She leads SKULE.org’s Gifts that Lifts segment, and manages our social media.
Music Director
Email: michael@skule.org
A 28-year-old who could pass as a kid when he fully shaves, Michael Dante decided to dedicate himself to #MakeLearningFun after being thoroughly impressed with MC SKULE‘s Beyond Average and 99 Math Problems. He studied mathematics while at university. Dante currently lives in Porltand, OR where he is the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter of the punk/jazz band Libido Cornucopia. Dante lends his percussive and sound engineering talents to help SKULE.org fulfill its mission.
Video Director
Email: drake@skule.org
A visual mastermind, Drake Whelton decided to dedicate himself to #MakeLearningFun after directing 99 Math Problems. He is passionate about combining his left and right brain to make creative videos in an efficient way. Prior experience includes being the founder of White Knuckle Films, and a videographer for the Saginaw Spirits.
Are You a SKULE Teacher?
Why SKULEÂ Â Â Work With Us
Are You a SKULE Teacher?
Why SKULEÂ Â Â Work With Us
Motivation is a key ingredient to successful learning. The best analogies or visuals will still fail to teach a student who isn’t motivated. My team even ran an experiment a few years ago, where we found that students who couldn’t solve certain SAT Math problems were suddenly able to solve them minutes later when the problems were presented as a “viral” meme puzzle.
Students spend hours binge-watching TV shows and listening to the same song repeatedly – without being forced to do so. What if they were that naturally inclined to learn math or history?
Students today have grown up with gadgets – many of them have probably read from an iPad before a book. When a student gets to choose between an iPhone and a boring math textbook (with confusing language and an endless list of problems), it’s no surprise that they choose the device that lets them access almost anything in the world within seconds. To “win” the competition for a student’s attention in 2017, Learning needs to appear in a more engaging format than a textbook.
The idea of making songs that teach students content has been around for a while. Teachers who want to incorporate songs into their lessons face a lot of difficulty in doing so. Creating a song on your own can be costly and time-consuming. The internet offers a lot of options, but not necessarily good ones. When I tried searching for songs to use with my own students, I found that most songs fell into two categories: songs are either too dense with content, or only cover content superficially. The dense songs are intended for people who already understand the content, since you can’t summarize a semester in 3 minutes. The superficial songs are entertaining songs that throw in relevant content vocab words, but don’t actually “teach” material.
Over the past few years, My old team tried to make songs that struck a balance between these two extremes. We’ve made some music videos and have performed in classrooms. The next phase is SKULE.org – a non-profit whose mission is to #MakeLearningFun
Our goal is to build a database of innovative learning materials – our goal is to have a topic list, and a searchable database of songs that teach each topic. These include songs that we create with schools across the country, as well as ones that are submitted to us. This way, teachers have a one-stop-shop to find high-quality educational songs. These videos will also include skits or other innovative ways to convey content while engaging students. We will also partner with DiagKNOWstics Learning to make an adaptive learning “KNOWadulting” platform available to all students for free. With this, they can learn real-world skills that aren’t taught in school. For example,”how do I get a debit card?”, “how do I do my taxes?”, and “What is my credit score and how do I improve it?”
-Rohen