Media release

Primary school teacher gets 3 million plus YouTube views

An Australian primary school teacher’s YouTube channel has passed more than three million views from its global fan base keen to watch his catchy teaching lessons set to rock and roll music.

Dan Colquhoun is the YouTube star known as Rocking Dan, Teaching Man.

The YouTube channel received more than 3.35 million hits, and his first animation was seen in more than 100 countries.

Most of the hits for the 47 songs that Dan has written and recorded come from Australia, Britain and the United States.

His songs, which he sings and plays the guitar to, are inspiring a generation of children around the world to embrace learning through music.

The dedicated teacher said he wants to help all children succeed with learning numeracy, social skills, and literacy skills.

“I struggled at school because I’m dyslexic, which meant I had trouble blending, segmenting and manipulating individual sounds and this results in difficulties with reading and writing,” Mr Colquhoun said.

“Writing songs to provide a different approach to learning seemed an obvious way to find an alternative for those kids who are challenged when learning the building blocks that the rest of their schooling is based upon.”

He added that music and movement help with oral language development, vocabulary, coordination, gross motor skills, maths, rhythm, rhyme and self-regulation. It also helps children learn and retain concepts more readily as it opens up multiple pathways to the brain.

“I struggled to learn in a conventional way so I tried to find a way to help all children learn concepts they might have difficulty understanding,” he said.

Australian Catholic University’s Acting Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education & Arts, Professor Elizabeth Labone, commended the ACU graduate for his dedication to teaching.

“Dan Colquhoun’s creative approach to excellence in primary school education is nothing short of outstanding, and demonstrates how highly-skilled teachers engage learners”.

“He is an incredible asset – not only to his employer – but also to a global movement in pursuit of 21st century teaching excellence”.

Students at St Declan’s Catholic Primary School in the Sydney suburb of Penshurst love

Mr Colquhoun’s musical creations, but so do their parents, other teachers, and a swathe of Google + and YouTube followers around the world.

“It’s amazing to hear children from Delaware, Nashville, Missouri or somewhere else in the world singing every word of one of my songs live via video link-up,” he said.

Dan Colquhoun graduated from Australian Catholic University with a post graduate degree in Education.