Saturday, August 29, 2009

Rationale and Roles for collective intelligence

I found myself going back and re-listening to a small segment of an interview with Henry Jenkins, a thought leader in the area of technology and its implications for education. So I decided to transcribe the bits of it I thought were important.

What I like is how he articulates the underlying rationale for collective intelligence (which is a foundation of Communities of Practice) and articulates the kinds of roles we each need to play in order for it to be successful.

“We assume everyone is an autonomous learner, everyone knows everything.” We know in a world of collective intelligence of social networks, everyone will know some things and what each member knows is available to the group as needed, that involves developing a new ethic of knowledge production, vetting, taking responsible for what you know, ensuring the accuracy of the information you communicate to others, having the responsibility to share what you know with others, taking accountability for people who share information that you know is wrong and correcting it. Then we have a self-correcting collaborative environment. It is different than the autonomous learning model that shapes more of our schools today. “ Henry Jenkins on Edutopia Click on the link called “shifting roles in the classroom” to hear the whole segment.

I wonder what the impact on a CoP would be of 'training' or 'reminding' Community of Practice (CoP) members what roles they need to play in order for the CoP to be successful? Anyone trying it?

Naava

1 comment:

willie campbell said...

I have been re-reading your notion of "roles" for collective intelligence and yes, it does take a culture shift from our rational autonomous English speaking person.
Two sets of material spring to my mind- 1)the Johnson and Johnson work on Circles of Learning- developed for the special education world, but very relevant indeed
and 2)the training in co-operative learning that is used by health educators in the HIV/Aids field-don't have its referencing to hand.
So yes, somone is working on it.
At a simple level, De-Bono's hats are a good start.
Go well.
Willie