The Anja S.

Greer Conference on Mathematics, Science and Technology

Sunday June 22, 2014
Featured Speaker: Alan November
Diana Tunnell for MA901A2

Mr. Alan November, founder of November Learning, LLC, shared an informative talk
Sunday evening discussing the possible positive shifts teachers can enable in a classroom
to create an educational culture of the empowered self-directed and collaborative
learner. Throughout the session Mr. November shared critical ideas gathered from
educational research. He supplemented the presentation with a variety of examples of how
teachers are meeting the needs of cultural shifts in the educational activities they provide
students. Many freely available online tools were also shown that demonstrate and
support student collaboration and ownership of learning.
To kick-off the evening, Mr. November shared a point from the research of Professor John
Hattie from New Zealand. Mr. Hatties research concluded that an essential skill to
student learning is self-assessment. Going hand-in-hand with student self-assessment is
the essential skill for the teaching of providing quality feedback. Really this should be
presented as a model for what we want to enable our students to do individually.
Interestingly enough, additional research suggests that improved student achievement is
seven times more likely to occur if the student hears the teachers feedback versus less than
one times more likely if a student considers written feedback alone. This leads me to
consider more strongly the use of regularly scheduled conferences and portfolios in my
math classroom. I also question how this may be a growing concern with the proliferation
of online coursework which generally reduces the verbal interaction of student and
teacher.
Mr. November shared a free online tool, Kaizena, which appears to work in conjunction
with Google Docs. Kaizena enables the student and teacher to attach recorded comments
to a document. Requiring the student to orally present their assignment (in a virtual
fashion), or address questions/concerns along with the submission, heightens the
engagement and interaction in the student/teacher dynamic. It also could improve how
feedback is received and hopefully utilized in revising future work. I perused the website
and poked the How Kazenia Works button, but would need to play with it more to state it
is a tool I would use regularly.
A second notable point made in Novembers presentation was referred to as the curse of
knowledge as coined by Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University. The curse
refers to the situation where teachers are so comfortable and familiar with content that
some may tend to present the material as if the class is equally comfortable with the
easycontent. Undoubtedly, that is not the case and creates frustration within the
classroom. Often students will turn to a classmate to clear confusion rather than to the
teacher. It was stated that many times the ideal tutors (which possibly may include
teachers) are those who also struggled with the concepts and were not necessarily top of
the class. I personally have been in that situation for a particular class, and that is likely all
it takes for me to empathize with a struggling student. I personally know understanding
the math content is not easy for everyone in all situations and therefore I hope to be more
discerning and sensitive to the needs of the entire class body.

A recent phenomenon that Mr. November shared as an opportunity to support students
affected by the curse of knowledge, or other inhibitors to learning, is the blossoming of
student produced academic video tutorials making their way to the Internet. Club
Academia.org, Math Train and AP50 Experience, a student led physics course at Harvard,
were three such examples. His interviews with the creators of these sites exposed that the
students found satisfaction in helping others and therefore were happy to put in the extra
time to create these videos, essentially working harder than normal for an assignment.
November also spoke on autonomy, purpose and mastery as three key motivators in
learning noted in the book entitled, Drive, by Dan Pink. In order to teach a peer, through
producing a video or otherwise, one will spend a good amount of time to ensure he/she
understands the content and, therefore, meaningful learning occurs. I have been
considering creating videos that would be available to support my students outside of class
and now may expand that into having my students help by participating in that effort.
I really appreciate the statement Mr. November shared, We expect them [students] to do
what we ask. We want them to do more than we expect. To encourage this shift we
teachers must inspire. Utilizing technologies that are cultural norms for our youth may
help to make learning more real for students. Mr. November suggested some engaging
assignments a teacher, Mrs. Jessica Caviness, sent to her students while at a professional
baseball game via Twitter. The students exceeded her expectations with the depth of
connection they made to the assignment and were able to view and collaborate on each
others posts. It is certainly my desire to create similar meaningful learning opportunities
which inspire my students to exceed my expectations.