Alan November Prepares Harvey for Global Economy

Raising kids to be global thinkers in a world that is radically different from what their parents grew up in is what technology guru Alan November believes will best prepare American students for the challenges of the 21st century.

But that’s not the only skill they’ll need. Having the ability to deal with “massive” amounts of information and being able to organize it, sift through it and understand it will all be valuable to students in this information-rich society.

The future college graduates will also need to be self-directed, have the ability to adapt to an ever-changing world that is getting “flatter” by the day, know how to solve problems, and have “very good global communication skills,” noted Mr November.

The sought-after expert and technology consultant was speaking before a group of Harvey parents October 22 in the third of a series of annual events sponsored by the Harvey Parents’ Association. The talks are intended to educate the Harvey community and the general public about cutting-edge educational ideas and technologies.

Mr. November, who heads up November Learning, a company dedicated to supporting and challenging teachers and students interested in expanding the boundaries of learning, spent a good deal of time discussing both the merits and the downfalls of the Internet.
Because the majority of students use the Internet as their first source of information rather than going to the library, Mr. November said it is critical that they know how to access the proper resources that are available online. Rather than using search engines such as Google, Mr. November said parents should be encouraging their children to use more reliable web sites like Answers.com, library reference sites and scholarly resources that would yield more accurate results.
“You’re the first generation of parents who are not trained to be literate in this medium,” he told the group, referring to the proliferation of users who have no idea how the most basic of Internet search engines work. Without the ability to cross-reference a search result, observed Mr. November, there is a danger that the information students receive could be masked and manipulated by others.

To empower students to become lifelong learners, Mr. November suggested that teachers use Web 2.0 services such as wikis and blogs that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. The most popular wiki is Wikipedia.com, the user-edited online encyclopedia that became an integral part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon a few years ago. Believing that the value of wikis in education is an invaluable one, Mr. November said, “I think the concept of other people adding more to your work and then looking at it is important for critical thinking and creativity.”

Mr. November said educators should also be looking toward the technology that students already have, such as MP3s and iPods, and using them to create podcasts on a wide variety of educational topics. Learning through blogs can also be useful, he added, and can “teach students to not only read and analyze, but to engage with the rest of the world.”

Acknowledging that there is indeed a “big shift in education,” Mr. November reassured his audience that Harvey teachers were already beginning to implement such ideas.

“We’ve got to teach students how to question information,” said Mr. November. “If we don’t, and we send our kids out into the world where these tools are dominant, they’ll be missing out on what it means to be a democracy.”

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