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Alan November: How Teachers and Tech Can Let Students Take Control
Katrina Schwartz
Fe brua ry 21, 2013 | 10:37 AM | By Ka t rina Schwa rt z

For many educators, helping students direct their own learning is a priority. Educator and author Alan November, who has been talking about ways to get students to own their learning f or years, draws on his experiences as a teacher, principal and education consultant to tell stories about some of the ideas he sees as integral to education. November joined Steve Hargadon in a discussion of his new book Who Owns the Learning: Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age, stressing the importance of global collaboration and the role of technology in making it all possible. Here are a f ew highlights f rom their discussion. SCHOOL ST RUCT URE CAN HOLD ST UDENT S BACK School of ten means rules and regulations that can seem unrelated to the broader goals of education. Students are told to sit down, be still, show up at specif ic times, and demonstrate knowledge in ways that have nothing to do with the real world. As a case in point, November talked about when he started his teaching career at a ref orm Erin Sc o tt school f or boys where the administration took rules seriously. He discovered that one of his students had been breaking into his classroom to practice coding at night. T he student showed a rare passion f or a subject that wasnt even being taught at that time, stayed f ocused on the task and was self -directed qualities normally valued by educators. At a time when f ew people knew even how to use a computer, this boy was teaching himself to code. But none of it mattered to an administration more concerned that hed broken the rules. We might have robbed kids natural ability to take control of defining their own problems by spoon feeding them little tiny problems one at a time. November pointed out the similarities between learning to code and the movement toward instant f eedback with some of the newest ed tech tools: engineers can test a string of code to see if it works, retrace steps to f igure out where it went wrong if it doesnt. In the same way, many blended learning methods provide the same kind of instant f eedback into the classroom, allowing both the learner and the instructor to understand where to shif t direction to gain understanding. November says that instant f eedback trend should be

embraced as a powerf ul learning tool. T he lesson f rom this, he said, is to teach students how to solve any problem, a general problem solving approach. And teach them to do it in community. T hats whats really going to serve them as they go through lif e. T he benef it of technology is that is has opened the door on the scope of global problems that students can involve themselves with, making their problem solving skills immediately relevant and encouraging self direction. HAVE ST UDENT S LOST T HE ABILIT Y T O DEFINE T HE QUEST ION? We might have robbed kids natural ability to take control of def ining their own problems by spoon-f eeding them little tiny problems one at a time, which ended up with students not being able to take the initiative to def ine their own, November said. He illustrated this point by describing a class where he asked students to identif y a community problem and then work to come up with a solution. He told them hed be there to of f er tools and to support them through the process. A student raised her hand and told him that it was his job as the teacher to come up with the problems and their job as students to give answers. Students and teachers alike have been brought up in an educational system that mimics an antiquated job market. T he teacher is the boss, managing the work of his student workers who have to produce goods that meet approval, he said. But many people f ear that system no longer serves students headed toward a less certain f uture, one that could necessitate that a student be able to def ine and create her own job. Teach students how to solve any problem; and teach them to do it in community. What concerns me is that school is way out of balance, November said. We are under an assumption in school that all these kids are going to apply to a job and have a boss that manages their work. He thinks schools are drastically underestimating childrens capabilities to invent and own their work and by extension the contributions they can make to the world. T ECHNOLOGY RECREAT ES T HE ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE As antiquated as it might seem in a world of iPads, mobile devices and 3D printers, November thinks schools should try to embody some of what worked about the one-room schoolhouse. Teachers taught all students regardless of age or level by def inition there had to be dif f erentiation in learning. T he reality of a one-room classroom is that the older kids are teaching the younger kids, November said. And it turns out that to teach, students really have to learn the material well. And the students also take more ownership of the school. One way to replicate that ownership now is to give students classroom jobs, allowing them to contribute something powerf ul to the classroom dynamic. From that beginning I think we can have deeper conversations about children taking more control of def ining their roles, November said. [RELAT ED READING: How to Fuel Students' Learning T hrough T heir Interests] He thinks technology has the power to bring the one-room schoolhouse back. Students can help one another, connect and collaborate globally. T hey can contribute meaningf ul work that can matter to real-world situations. T he real revolution is inf ormation and global communication, not technology, November said. Technology is merely the means to access the inf ormation and share it in community. November gave an example of a middle school teacher who had his students contribute to a wiki that supplemented the textbook. T hey wrote and diagrammed material that would be passed on to students

f ollowing them. One of the teachers f ormer students contacted him while in high school asking to revise the part of the wiki hed worked on three years previously. He said hed learned more now and f elt a sense of responsibility f or what hed produced. Getting students to care on that level and to be responsible f or one another is exactly the kind of shared exploration in community that education should encourage, he said.