Collective Intelligence and Personal Learning Environments - Reflective Post #4

Collective Intelligence

Shawn Michael Bullock lays out the potential scenario for the future of education where learning becomes as social process, in his article Collective Intelligence: What it could mean for Education. Bullock states that humans have a natural impulse to create and share and by doing so join together in collective intelligence. Bullock defines collective intelligence as knowledge that is shared or developed by a group "that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals." Bullock also supports his theory with the availability of web tools and social media, barriers are breaking down between digital natives and digital immigrants as people of all ages are able to produce, collaborate and share in the collective intelligence environment.

In Lynn Ilon's article How Collective Intelligence Redefines Education the statement is made that formal education systems are not completely compatible with collective intelligence. Ilon goes on to explain each system in detail. Ilon describes the formal education system as managed intelligence. Expertise comes from, and is controlled by, the top of the organization which is guided by policies and procedures which keeps content and delivery consistent. Any knowledge outside of the system is assumed as incorrect--Ilon at this point offers the rationale for Wikipedia's banishment in schools as its content is not validated by experts since anyone can post. In contrast, Ilon describes, collective intelligence systems as collaborative and building upon each other's knowledge. Knowledge is built, becomes more sophisticated, innovative and becomes easier to use. It is in this environment that rapid change is allowed to occur, no one is the ultimate authority and the evolution of knowledge can take place--Ilon illustrates this concept with the statement "no one expects to get the same search results from Google from one day to the next."

Personal Learning Environments

In the Educause article 7 Things you should know about Personal Learning Environments leads off with an inspirational memoir of a student named David who enrolls in a digital photography class, and due to the personal learning environment he created and experiences, attracts the eye of a newspaper editor and sells one of his photographs. The remainder of the article explains the ins and outs of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). Depending on your interest level, some of the brief topics will be of particular interest, and for me it boiled down to two topics, "Why is it significant?" and "What are the downsides?" The significance of a PLE is that a student can learn from connections they make, through resources they select and organize rather than consuming information provided in a traditional course, textbook or library. The article states that "PLEs put students in charge of their own learning processes, challenging them to reflect on the tools and resources that help them learn best." Here is where it transitions to the downsides associated with PLEs. Student maturity becomes a major risk. Since a PLE is self-directed, the responsibility for learning rests on the student. The article states that "many students lack the information fluency necessary to recognize when a writer speaks from authority...or opinion."

In the video presentation a 7th grade student explains her Personal Learning Environment. In the video, the student shows you how she navigates the customized "home page" she's developed and how she interacts with it for her classes. It is interesting to hear her describe how she uses a variety of online tools, sites and services to learn.

This week's articles tie together the concept of allowing students to use PLEs and how collective intelligence comes into play. I didn't expect to learn something from a 7th grader this evening about PLEs, but I did. This student gathered the knowledge she's learned so far, about constructing PLEs, and created a video for the world to view. YouTube has quickly become a collective intelligence system (Fun Fact: Did you know YouTube is the second most popular search engine?). Whether a 7th grader demonstrates a Personal Learning Environment or someone shows you how to change your oil in less than 5-minutes or if you need help completing the final level in the video game Portal, chances are there is a video posted to YouTube for help. This only proves that Bullock's statement is true and it's "natural human impulse to create and share."