Alan November: Empowering Students with Technology
Chapter 4-
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could invite major figures into our classroom to discuss their lives and experiences? Well this is not always possible.
Can we invite Anne Frank into our room when reading The Diary of Anne Frank? How about Abraham Lincoln when discussing The Civil War?
What we can do, however, is use primary resources to enhance these learning situations. How about using the actual letters written between families while one member was serving in Vietnam to learn more about the Vietnam War than what is in the text book?
Alan Novembers suggests using primary source document to increase authentic learning experiences. One avenue to access primary source documents is from the National Archives. November also points out that educators should also teach the skills so students can access these documents on their own.
This reminds me of the Chinese proverb…
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
It also remind me of the first video in Taini's Alan November's Blog Post in which Alan November speaks about the skills that we must teach our students including the importance of teaching our students to be self-directed, independent thinkers and learners.
We must teach our students the skills to access and evaluate primary source documents on their own…
not just the skills to read and respond to a primary source document we have provided for them!
Chapter 5-
We now live in an age where technology rules just about every aspect of our lives. Online learning and access to web-based knowledge has become the norm for most.
As asked by Alan November...
Do schools have an obligation to prepare students for a world where those who can access learning resources 24-7 potentially have an enormous advantage over those who can only rely on the physical structure of the classroom to learn?
In my opinion, the answer is absolutely!!! We as educators need to do the best we can to provide students the tools and the desire to learn and learn well in all arenas, including an online learning community. As elementary teachers, we do not have students who are taking online courses, but in the future many of our students probably will be learning in an online community. The skills that they will need to succeed in this learning environment must begin to be taught NOW!
In the second video in Taini's Alan November's Blog Post, Alan November speaks about teaching students the importance of evaluating web-sites and using critical thinking skills to evaluate the information accessed. I am reminded of what I read in Sara's Alan November's Blog Post. Sara speaks about November’s views of blocking sites as a short-term victory. Even with the constraints we face in our classroom (blocked sites being only one of them) we need to teach all of our students the skills to succeed in the 21st century technological age- not the 20th century industrial age! The critical thinking, analyzing, and evaluating skills to succeed in online learning must begin with us in elementary school.
The standards emphasized in the Nets for students and teachers should be ever present in our learning communities while we organize student-centered, technology rich learning environments.
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