After hearing Alan November's keynote on Thursday morning, several of us said, "that's it - we can go home now...". The feeling was that if we could just implement his ideas, it would be awesome! He spoke of having the students become curriculum researchers. Here's an example: A student found a youtube video about a book they were reading in class. He asked his teacher, "why can't we do an assignment like this?" So they did. The teacher reported that she saw the students spend so much time just choosing the music and images, discussing the emotions that they should relay, and the order they should be shown. What a cool way for students to demonstrate knowledge!
Mr. November's message is that we should shift the control from teachers to students and change the role of students by asking them to find assignments from around the world - ask them to do the research. He stated that before long we would not have closed book tests but rather open source tools.
Another video he showed was a tutorial on factoring done by a student. She demonstrated how to factor the number 32 in real time and with voice over. Not only was she showing her knowledge of the subject, but now others can view it and learn how to factor from someone their own age.