Mass Collaboration

The good old essential questions...Are we preparing students for a world of mass collaboration? How do we prepare students for a world of mass collaboration?

Short answer 1: It depends on your definition of 'we'.
Short answer 2: Collaborate early and often, connecting with others in an ever larger and more substantive ways..

The more pressing issue is: how do we get students to see the power of mass collaboration? I always come back to this point - call me Johnny One Note - but there is no inherent power in the internet/digital tools. Like an atom waiting to be split, there is huge potential power in a digitally connected world. If all our students use facebook, youtube and flickr they aren't necessarily harnessing the power of anything. They may just be entertaining themselves in a modern format.

Robin unearthed some amazing examples of the real power of a digitally connected populace. These are the things we need to model for our students. These are the examples they need to see. Let's face it, we live on one tremendously despoiled planet with social problems on a scale that, it would seem, defies the possibility of solution. Mass collaboration can unleash the potential energy of human beings acting in concert.

I don't mean those facebook groups to save Darfur...I mean the potential to actually participate through your voice and your words. Mass collaboration is in its infancy but if our students see examples like those Robin found (taking part in a governmental budgeting process, running a complex organization, protesting) they will begin to see that they have the ability to join/lead/change.

Without this kind of education, students will be what the corporations who dominate the digital world want them to be - consumers and, occasionally, creators of content that can be marketed to others.