Cultivating the Collective Intelligence

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Cultivating the Collective Intelligence

• Wikis as Education Tools

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Warning! You are now Entering the Hive!
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Overcoming Fetishized Knowledge

• Pierre Levy Collective Intelligence (1997)
• The future should embrace the intelligence that
  we all possess from the CEO to the homemaker
  every human being should be involved in
  contributing their knowledge to the collective
  whole for the benefit of all.
• The Rhetorical Act for Levy
• 1. Contributing knowledge to the whole
• 2. Accessing the knowledge of others
• 3. Reorganizing the existing information, thus
  creating new

The basis and goal of collective intelligence is
mutual recognition and enrichment of
individuals rather than the cult of fetishized
or hypostatized communities. (Levy 13)
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12 Tenets of Collective Intelligence
From The Transitioner

• An emerging whole referring to a group or
  collective as a whole
• A holoptical space our place in the whole and
  our knowledge of the whole
• A social contract not only about the values and
  rules of the group, but also the means of its
  self-perpetuation.
• A polymorphic architecture the mapping of
  relationships is continuously updated depending
  on circumstances, proficiency, perceptions,
  tasks to accomplish, or relational rules based
  on the social contract.
• A circulating object-link am agreed-upon goal or
  process-goal
• A learning organization social process that
  takes charge of mistakes, and integrates and
  transforms them into shared cognitive objects.

There will be no Magnificent twilight To usher in
the Knowledge space, only Numerous pale
dawns. (Levy 141)
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12 Tenets of Collective Intelligence

• 7. A gift economy give before you receive
• 8. A sufficient currency medium of exchange and
  reference of value
• 9. Standards and norms organize the cohesion and
  interoperability of large communities
• 10. An information system interconnection via
  shared interfaces and digestible information
  forms
• 11. A permanent interpenetration with cyberspace
• 12. Personal development the development of the
  whole also develops the individual

Abundance makes command relationships difficult
to sustain and exchange relationships an almost
pointless game. In gift cultures, social status
is determined not by what you control but by
what you give away. From Future Positive
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• The idea of the collective intelligence creates a
  free-flowing system of knowledge with no
  bureaucratic controller, it also creates an
  informational free-for-all where no one decides
  what knowledge is worthy of contribution and what
  should be left out.

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Evidence of the Collective

• Free, unrestricted, unregulated publishing
• Knowledge for knowledges sake
• Anonymity of the individual in exchange of the
  greater whole

Still indiscernible, Cloaked in the mists Of the
future, bathing Another humanity in Its
murmuring, we have A rendezvous with
the Over-language. (Levy)
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• Why do we need to embrace Collective Intelligence
  before we can embrace wikis?

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• Because of what Wikis are!
• Wiki Wiki is a piece of server software that
  allows users to freely create and edit Web page
  content using any Web browser. Wiki supports
  hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for
  creating new pages and crosslinks between
  internal pages on the fly.

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• Wiki Quick in Hawaiian
• The first wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in
  1995 for the Portland Pattern Repository.

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How do Wikis Work?

• Allows the organization of contributions to be
  edited in addition to the content itself.
• Allowing everyday users to create and edit any
  page in a Web site is exciting in that it
  encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes
  content composition by nontechnical users.
• Wiki vs. Blog Similar to a blog in structure and
  logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or
  modify content that has been placed on the Web
  site using a browser interface, including the
  work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog,
  typically authored by an individual, does not
  allow visitors to change the original posted
  material, only add comments to the original
  content.

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Types of Wiki What makes a Wiki a Wiki?

• Editable via a browser
• Server hosted
• Can be open (anyone can edit) or closed
  (permissions necessary for editing)
• Can be internal (LAN) or external (WAN)
• Content added is automatically added to existing
  pages without the use of a secondary program

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Wiki Examples

• Wikipedia
• Wikicities my wikicity on hypertext theory
• Star Wars Wikicity
• Drupal as Wiki limiting access
• www.intellagirl.us/drupal
• Wiki used for organization management
• Wiki Books

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Ways to Use Wikis in Classroom

• Information sources (simple websites easily
  created)
• Student assignment hand-in (with the advantage of
  peer ratings)
• collaborative web-writing
• problem solving
• project spaces
• focused discussions (forum-like discussions)
• case libraries (projects scrapbooks and
  exhibitions)
• cross class/courses projects (interdisciplinary
  projects)
• for community building among students

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Pros and Cons of the Hive

• Pros
• Encourages students to contribute information
• Repository of class info for reference
• Easy for non-tech savvy users
• Cons
• Server hosting issues vs. Free hosting
• Content management and control
• User management

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Wiki References

• Technology, Education and the Wiki
• The Wide World of Wiki Choosing a wiki for an
  element of a fully online undergraduate course
• Teaching and Learning with Wikis