I am going to try and find a different website or organization every week that focuses on Community Intelligence or Collaborative Education. This week, we'll take a look at the Eastern Sierra Institute of Collaborative Education. According to the website, they "are a nonprofit organization supporting innovative educational partnerships which enrich the understanding of the environment, science and culture. Since 1997, they have worked together with organizations that share their passion for the Eastern Sierra to create a new appreciation for this exceptional place and the people that call it home." (2001).
The organization concentrates on collaborative education, research, workshops and two educational programs, the Eastern Sierra Watershed Program and the Roadside Heritage program. Both programs rely on the collaboration of professionals and members of the Eastern Sierra community to improve science education and conservation of the area. The program's approaches to science education and service-learning based on research that suggests students who apply classroom knowledge to real world projects acquire an enriched learning experience (2009).
The world of entertainment has changed drastically. Henry Jenkins book, "Convergence Culture", looks at the different attitudes that companies, educators and consumers take toward an ever-evolving technology. One of the main ideas that Jenkins keeps touching on is the idea of collective intelligence communities. Collective intelligence communities are defined as communities that have "the capacity of to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as differentiation and integration, competition and collaboration" (Por, 2007). There are several websites out there that try to strive toward this goal:
The book ties back to everything that we have been learning for the past nine months and looks at the different interactions across multiple media platforms and how the consumer moves through these different platforms. If you take this same idea and transfer it to teaching students, you will be very successful in understanding how to reach students on their level. Media platforms have become a very important part of today's culture. Futures are banked on these platforms sometimes. Viral marketing is a very good example of this. Think back to the late 90's when the Blair Witch Project came out. Clips from the "documentary" were leaked out on the internet. Word started spreading like wildfire about the "real occurrence" of three filmmakers that disappeared in the wilderness of Burkittesville, never to be heard from again. The PR on the film began to grow exponentially and led to the movie becoming one of the most successful grossing independent films of all time. More recent examples include the President's use of the internet in his winning campaign in 2008. Collaborative technology has become a mainstay in culture today. As teachers, we need to learn how to harness this technology in order to effectively communicate with our students and prepare them for tomorrow.
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Por, G. (2007, December 26). Blog of Collective Intelligence. Retrieved from http://www.community-intelligence.com/blogs/public/
