Collective Intelligence and Judgment
There are a few quotes from the text on this subject that I
would like to share and address. The first gives and example of what “collective
intelligence and judgment” actually is.
1. “Like-minded
individuals gather online to embrace common enterprises, which often involve
access and processing information. In such a world, everyone knows something,
nobody knows everything, and what any one person knows can be tapped by the
group as a whole.”
Why would any school not want to tap into something that has
such potential for learning and self –worth?
In a community where collective intelligence is admired and sought
after, suddenly, everyone has value.
Instead of being the one child in the classroom who doesn’t know the
answer, you become a valued member of the community because of the knowledge
you do have. And, another bonus is that
the information those around you possess becomes easier to obtain because an
environment is fostered in which open communication is key.
The second quote addresses one of the major consequences
of the environment that is created by
“collective intelligence.”
2. “As players learn
to work and play in such knowledge cultures, they come to think of problem solving
as an exercise in teamwork.”
“Problem solving as a team” is an important and often
necessary part of living and working in any number of jobs today. We no longer live in a society (and in truth,
never really have) in which you, and you alone are responsible to solve all the
problems in your workplace. Jobs require
the ability to work with others, and if the truth were told, life in general
also requires that same ability, as the text also stated.
Which brings us to quote number four.
4. “This focus on
teamwork and collaboration is also, not coincidentally, how the modern
workplace is structured—around ad-hoc configurations of employees, brought
together because their diverse skills and knowledge are needed to confront a
specific challenge, then dispersed into different clusters of workers when new
needs arise.”
This is also what is needed in classrooms today: a focus on
teamwork and collaboration. I think, to
a certain extent, this is already happening, but the traditional structure of a
classroom is one in which each student receives their own homework, and then goes
home to do it, on their own. Schools
are not teaching students how to work together as team, and therefore are not
training them to work outside of school.
As the text states, “Unfortunately, most contemporary education focuses
on training autonomous problem solvers and is not well suited to equip students
with these skills. Whereas a collective intelligence community encourages
ownership of work as a group, schools grade individuals.” What could be further from most scenarios in
the real world?
As a drama teacher, I think that collective intelligence and
judgment is already a natural consequence of the subject. Much of what you do in theatre is done as a
community. Whether it be putting
together a scene in class, working on monologues in pairs, or producing a
full-length show, collective intelligence and judgment isn’t just used, it is
imperative! When producing a
full-production, I fully intend to use the individual skills and knowledge that
my students already have. Perhaps one
will have passion for costume design, and another will love hair and
makeup. A third could be interested in the
setup and configuration of the lights.
The list could go on and on.
In short, as a theatre teacher, I would be downright idiotic
to try and teach theatre without teaching the value of collective intelligence
and judgment because those things are exactly what theatre is!
1 comment:
1. “Like-minded individuals gather online to embrace common enterprises, which often involve access and processing information. In such a world, everyone knows something, nobody knows everything, and what any one person knows can be tapped by the group as a whole.”
I agree that wikis are really good to help everyone contribute information and be valued for what they have, but I think that there should be a caution exercised for them as well. With Wikis there is a chance that students can more easily copy each other’s work or not do the work that they need to do. However, this is probably an equal chance to what there is now that students will copy work from other sources, so there wouldn’t be an increase in problems. I have used wiki-type ideas to study during college – wiki- study-guides, notes from class, reviews from class, etc. They were a big help because I could not only contribute what I remembered and use that to help me study, but use other peoples’ comments to foster a sort of dialogue to help remind me of the things that I perhaps didn’t remember as well. I agree that wikis are a great, untapped resource and should be further utilized throughout schools.
2. “As players learn to work and play in such knowledge cultures, they come to think of problem solving as an exercise in teamwork.”
“As players learn to work and play in such knowledge cultures…” Children often learn how to do things by first playing at them, then applying abilities learned during play in other parts of their lives. However, I’m discovering more and more older “kids” (aka adults that haven’t really fully taken on that mantle of responsibility and moved out of kid-dom) that aren’t actually learning anything from the games that they are playing. While I’m not a psychologist, I think that instead of learning they are instead using them as a substitute or escape from the difficulties of reality. There are a great number of games out there – both my typing and early math skills (add, subtract, multiply, divide) were sharpened in games. I also learned things like how to use triangulation and GPS coordinates to find things through games. Personally, I can think of more instances that I learned/sharpened facts through games as opposed to skills (teamwork etc). Perhaps this is just the difference between the child’s perspective and the adult’s (since I didn’t do much gaming as a child), because what I see my adult friends doing is more bashing on the other players rather than applying good teamworking skills.
4. “This focus on teamwork and collaboration is also, not coincidentally, how the modern workplace is structured—around ad-hoc configurations of employees, brought together because their diverse skills and knowledge are needed to confront a specific challenge, then dispersed into different clusters of workers when new needs arise.”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes Jen. I agree that you’d be downright idiotic to try to teach theatre without collective intelligence and judgment. It would make your life miserable! Why make things harder for you? In a way theatre is collective intelligence – taking what you know, then combining it with what others know – and judgment – synthesizing that information and paring it down to what you need. All aspects of theatre include some research, so this applies perfectly. Teaching students judgment especially would be important, since not every fact that you come across while doing your research will be applicable to your concept, though it still could relate to something else within the play that is less relevant. Also, judgment can be used while processing scripts to choose the next season – what is good and addresses the needs of your school, community, and resources constraints.
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