Reflective Post #4: Collective Intelligence and Personal Learning Environments

Article/Video Summaries

In his article, “Collective Intelligence: What It Could Mean For Education”, Shawn Bullock expresses disapproval for Prensky’s well-known article on digital natives and digital immigrants.  He explains that education rarely changes because “we tend to teach as we were taught according to familiar cultural patterns” (45-46). While American society does try to implement new teaching strategies, Bullock is not convinced that education has been changed in any crucial ways.  Although North American education is said to be geared toward individualized education, Bullock believes web 2.0 products have the ability to positively impact learning through social interactions (47).  Technology can help us share information, produce new ideas, and collaborate in a variety of ways.  Not only will technology help us reach new ideas and concepts more efficiently through social networking but it is cost effective and has the ability to change our cultural beliefs about education (47).  Bullock explains it is not helpful or relevant to label people digital immigrants or natives.  Instead, we need to concentrate on our natural desire to be social and work together while using web 2.0 tools to facilitate collaboration. 

Lynn Ilon’s article, “How Collective Intelligence Redefines Education” focuses on the disconnection between the values in our culture, the mannerisms of our current economy, and the teaching methods of our education system.  Ilon explains “collective intelligence”, an online collaborative learning style that has been used to gather and share information efficiently.  Unfortunately, this style of collaboration that is making other industries thrive has not been well accepted in education systems.  While Ilon suspected this was due in part to teacher training and attitudes toward the new concept, she later concluded that education’s disinterest in change is due to its deep roots in the past economy.  She describes the current education system to be run like a business with “top-down management” guided by policies and procedures.  In this system, learning is based on expertise, logic, and trade skills as a result of the Industrial Age.  The Industrial Era valued mass production more than innovation, leading our culture to value an education that focused on skills and information that would create skilled employees.  Furthermore, collective intelligence has not been welcomed into learning environments because the people and resources a student can access on a particular topic are not always experts.  Since our culture and economy are becoming increasingly dependent on technology and social media to propel forward, Ilon predicts that technology will affect the economy, and the economy will in turn finally change the way students are taught.  Ilon describes many advantages to collective intelligence style learning, including increased problem solving skills, social collaboration, and increased communication.  Collective intelligence could eliminate the need for “one expert” and spread knowledge to all learners, helping them become more innovative, adaptable, and capable of critical thought.

The article, “7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments” (PLEs) describes tools, online learning communities, and resources that help individual students reach their educational goals.  While PLE is driven by the individual, the student still interacts with others while synthesizing information from various resources and requesting feedback from peers or experts. Typically, each student has a blog or website where they can post various digital resources and their own reflections.  It is important that the student be a “self-starter” and aware of their preferred learning styles.    PLE’s create an environment for up to date, constantly evolving information.  They create resourceful, organized learners who are engaged in the learning process and willing to collaborate with others.  PLE’s help students become resourceful and thoughtful about the information they deem authentic.  

The student video on personal learning environments showed PLE’s from a middle schooler’s point of view.  The student presented a dashboard of sorts that held information organized into personal, social, and educational sections.  Resources such as educational games, online note taking, Google Docs, blogging, and collaborative publishing are all part of the learning process.  The student gathers information from various websites and synthesizes the important parts into multimedia presentations.  In an effort to make sure her information is authentic, the student is responsible for contacting experts on the topic of her presentations to give her feedback on the accuracy of the information she gathered.  The student seems happy with the PLE and enjoys having a paperless educational system that is self-paced.  

Reflection

After reading the articles and watching the PLE video, I could relate very much to Bullock and Ilon’s viewpoints.  I agree with Bullock that education does not seem to be evolving much.  I believe the economic changes that Ilon mentioned have caused our cultural values and interests to evolve.  As a result, the students have changed while the education system has not.  The way the current education system was described by both authors seems authoritative and restrictive.  I think these characteristics were rooted in noble efforts to create a strong economic foundation.  However, the rigid structure is inhibiting creativity and innovation, characteristics of many thriving contemporary businesses.  I enjoy watching video lectures on Ted.com.  I once watched one by Sir Ken Robinson, who explains that “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”  I couldn’t agree more. 

The way Ilon described our Industrial Age inspired education system was not at all flattering.  There is a sense of authority that produces few experts of knowledge rather than many people who can collaborate and influence society.  Collective intelligence seems like a fantastic approach to learning that will help people access knowledge and find inspiration in worlds and peers far away from their own.  I recently watched a documentary on Chinese art activist, Ai Weiwei who uses social media to collaborate on projects.  His blogs, Twitter account, and other online resources are constantly blocked by the government, causing him to constantly seek new and innovative online resources for communicating with others.   Online tools and social media have made him an incredibly effective artist and leader.  He is quoted as saying, “Censorship is saying: ‘I’m the one who says the last sentence.  Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.’ But the internet is like a tree that is growing.  The people will always have the last word- even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice.  Such power will collapse because of a whisper.”      I think the education standards are, in effect, censoring the ways students can learn.  Regardless of whether or not our education system embraces technology as a means of learning, I think it is a matter of time before the students and teachers themselves begin implementing the tools they find valuable from the bottom, up.