Week 3 - Blog Posting #5 -Social Media

The rise of social media as an educational tool seems both revolutionary and overwhelming. Revolutionary in its ability to move students beyond the classroom to be able to connect with other students from anywhere in the world. Revolutionary in the teaching and learning that can extend outside the confines of the school building and the school day. But overwhelming in that I am not sure most teachers have any idea how to effectively use social media as a learning tool, myself included. As I learn more about how to use social media it remains important to recognize why it is important.

In "Here They Come", Shirkey (2008)says "[T]he ;core idea is [that] we are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action, all outside the framework of traditional institutions and organizations.... (p.248).

I remember when cooperative learning was a hot topic for teachers (1980s?) and how that seemed so transformational, with articles and books written about how to "facilitate cooperative learning groups." Web 2.0 and social media sites in particular are founded on cooperation and collaboration. I love what James Surowiecki writes about in his book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, (2004).

His basic claim is that there is wisdom in groups of people. Where we have for too long focused on looking for the one smart person or one smart idea, some of the best ideas and trends (in his case marketing trends) have come from the thinking that evolves from people working together. A "crowd," according to Surowiecki is really any group of people who can act collectively to make decisions and solve problems. So, on the one hand, big organizations—like a company or a government agency—count as crowds. And so do small groups, like a team of scientists working on a problem. Social media is the consummate example of a crowd that could be two guys making a video in their garage to a team in a company working from different sites, to the entire world.

Surowieki says that there are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks.

In any formal or traditional setting it is not typically possible to get these elements to occur. But Web 2.0 social media allows it to occur all the time. This is revolutionary and overwhelming, but in a positive dilemma kind of way.

Shirky, C. (2008.) Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Press HC

Surowiecki,, J., (2004) Wisdom of the Crowds, Random House