Collective Intelligences... The Magnificence of Wikipedia!

Personally, I am fan of Wikipedia. If I am ever in need of information, I will nearly always go to wikipedia first and utilise it as a starting point. I was surprised to learn that wikipedia is actually more accurate than I originally thought. I was always told that wikipedia is unreliable and should not be used in a university setting. My views have changed a little bit now. I would use wikipedia for ideas and to locate further references and resources but I would never utilise it as my primary resource.


Advantages of Wikipedia:

1. Relatively reliable source of information
2. Promotes collaborative learning - multiple authors
3. Authors are required to reference information - adds to reliability factor

Disadvantages of Wikipedia:

1. Can be edited by anyone - no matter of credentials
2. May be bias (or possibly multiple biases)

The concept of bias was interesting to consider and can exist in any text. A persons background will influence the way that they view the world and how they assess and present information. For example, two historical texts which were produced in different countries can conflict with other. Each side will create a representation of the world that fits in to their own cultural and social context. The same exists with any source of information. The fact that wikipedia has so many authors, will most likely promote various viewpoints and therefore biases. I think that this can be an advantage over relying solely on text books or other online resources, which may only have one view point, carrying its own set of author intentions.

Collective Intelligence is a form of group intelligence which is created by users collaborating as a community and sharing knowledge. 

Collective Intelligences function in two ways: 

1. To promote collective group opinions, through the use of resources such as google, tag clouds and word diagrams.
2. To promote collaborate group work, through the use of resources such as wikipedia

Another interesting topic that we studied this week was the place of collective intelligence in the classroom. In an article that we were asked to consider, school students were given the opportunity to utilise any technologies that they wish in an exam to answer test questions. The purpose of this study was to allow students to be involved in the collaborative construction of knowledge. This is so different to the traditional tests that I undertook while in school, where such collaborative constructivism would be considered cheating. I am in two minds about this study. I think that students should have the autonomy to collaborate with other students while in the classroom, but I am in conflict that students be allowed access to phones and technological resources while they are sitting an exam.

I found this amazing resource to create word clouds based on the insertion of text. I decided to place my own blog into this website and this is what I discovered... So, it turns out that I am currently unable to turn my word cloud code into an actual word cloud. If anybody reads this and knows how to do it, please let me know and we can work collaboratively to conquer this technology!

SUCCESS!

Web 2.0: A Social Constructivist Approach

(image: Cool Town Studios. http://www.cooltownstudios.com/images/web2.0.jpg)

Social constructivism is the ‘it’ teaching strategy at the moment as it focuses on the learner as the central figure in the mediation of information. The focus is on children learning through doing, which involves active participation in activities and discussions and essentially students being the constructors of their own knowledge. Students enter the classroom with their own set of values and beliefs, which varies from student to student. No two students are the same, therefore various teaching strategies need to be employed.

Web 2.0 is focused on:

1. Active web authoring -anyone can create webpages and articles. 
2. Continuous interaction between users all over the world - blogs and discussion boards and also collaborative learning sites, such as wikipedia.

Web 2.0 coincides with the social constructivist approach, in that students are always engaging in what they are doing and are creating information at the same time as receiving information. Internet users are autonomous and can choose to maintain anonymity while actively engaging with a variety of websites and resources.

Blogs can be useful in a schools setting, as a way in which students can communicate with users in the classroom and around the world. An exciting element with blogs is the fact that they can be edited and that no information is permanent. This is a very different concept to the traditional pen and paper technology, which is very much a permanent action. Students can create information and then after considering other ideas, can edit their blogs to maintain relevant and up to date information. In a school setting, a relatively safe idea would be to set up a blogging community that operates between schools in a particular area, this will ensure that teachers know who the students are communicating with and can monitor student activity online.

I found this youtube video useful as it reinforced some of the integral social constructivist concepts. I thought it would be interesting to consider the various comments that the youtube users posted regarding this video. An intriguing viewpoint was the idea that constructivism is too idealistic and that the focus of teaching children how to think, instead of directly instructing them is not beneficial to the students. Personally, I do not agree with this comment. I think that teaching students how to think and how to process information is far more beneficial than directly instructing students. I remember a lot of my school learning was based upon memorisation and studying to a test, which honestly was ineffective as I studies in order to achieve a particular grade and not for the desire to learn. I can understand how people will reach negative conclusions regarding constructivism, as they are based upon their own schooling experiences and how they were instructed in the classroom. I do believe that the promotion of videos such as this one, will begin to bridge the gap in the generational understanding of constructivist theories.