All in all
13 years ago
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Collective Intelligence
I see collective intelligence as a very positive thing, especially in the context of education. Having students create their own information as a group, and build on their knowledge through collaborative work and conversation, through a Wiki, seems to me to be a fantastic and engaging tool. Plus, all students have something to be proud of at the end of the unit. As a teacher, it would be so interesting to watch this learning process, see it grow, and have every student in the same place, working on a larger project. It is almost like an online classroom. However, does it create an equal learning environment? Do some students take over and do most of the work, or can it be set up so that everyone must contribute relatively equally for it to work?
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Yes I wonder if wikis sometimes just end up representing the views of the most assertive, the most eloquent or just the most nerdy contributors. As teachers, I guess we need to guide these things a bit so everyone is contributing in a meaningful way - just like with any other group task we'd set up. Any ideas how this might work in practice?
ReplyDeleteI guess it is inevitable that some students would be more active in participating in a wiki environment. It would be the teacher's role to encourage/support students who don't appear to be so enthusiastic about using these tools. How could this be done? Helping students to draft posts, taking turns to contribute & perhaps focusing on how different kids might like to participate. For example, if a child is not so confident with writing, offer an alternative way of communicating... posting one of their photos, cartoons or even a video.
ReplyDeleteSome good suggestions here. One of the great things about all digital tools is that you can use them to help develop students' multiliteracies skills ... so encouraging them to create and post images, audio files, video files, slideshows, digital stories, etc, is a really good idea.
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