Edging Ahead…

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Not very effectively, if we are talking about Mass Collaboration using emerging Web2.0 tools. Until recently, we actively discouraged kids from using even Wikipedia – arguably the first and most developed example of “Mass Collaboration” on the planet (satement made in class on April 23rd).  Arguably, because;

• Wikipedia has published statistics indicating that in October 2007 they maxed out at 175,000 contributors who have edited (in English) at least 10 times since joining.
• In March 2009, Second Life reports that the number of Residents with repeat logins users hit 732,526.
  
• In April 2008, statistics published in http://www.mmogchart.com/ showed World of WarCraft topping the MMORPG charts at 10,000,000 users, 5.5 Million of which are in Asia.

Are we preparing students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Not very effectively. We still generally;

• require written (and usualy harccopy) assignments as indicators of learning or understanding. More often than not, these assignments are assigned to and assessed by, individuals (the student expected to develop the assignment on his/her own, and the teacher “marking” it personally).
• dismiss alternative media or assessment tasks as being unmanageable or “unassessable”.
• discourage  (or prohibit) kids from playing MMORPG’s in school and virtually never enlist them in the service of learning or assessment
• read about (and perhaps tinker with individually) virtual worlds like Second Life,  but have no official presence there.
• offer kids “penpal-type” experiences with students in remote areas using the new tools, occasionally Skype in a speaker from another part of the world, and sometimes set up “global classroom” projects involving a handful of classes geographically remote from each other,  but in reality, these projects still account for single-digit percentage of the average student’s day

Do we get kids involved in truly “Mass Collaboration” activities? Not very often, if ever, at this writing? How many of our kids have edited a Wikipedia article under our guidance? How many are members of Teen Second Life with school sponsorship or support? How many are MMORPG gamers with school acknowledgement? (I sponsor a “Game” division of my library club, which has a dozen active members in a school population of 700)

How do we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration? Perhaps the question should be “How would we prepare students for a world of Mass Collaboration (if we were truly doing so)?”

How would we prepare students for such a world? We would;

• Rewrite Acceptable Use Policies and “device use policies” to acknowledge a vastly enhanced range of acceptable activity with both bandwith and with access devices.
• Encourage student to share with teachers their online experiences and expertises rather than to hide them because they are “against the rules”.
• Recognize and mentor student Pathfinders who would search out, pilot and evaluate emerging technologies for accessing, managing and sharing insights and for creating new learning. This would logically and functionally enhance our commitment to helping students;
  • Reach their academic, recognizable potential
  • Become experts in understanding and guiding their own learning
  • Acquire an international education that inspires understanding and enthusiasmfor world citizenship and service to others:
• Massively increase our bandwidth so that we could support whatever (appropriate) online activities kids might like to engage in. This would include;
  • Online Gaming, both of the strategy-based MMORGS, but also traditional games like Chess. Chess ladders are common on the web, and players could join ongoing tournaments at their level of expertise and learn from both experts and simply from an exponentially larger pool of players than is available in their “real” world, whereever it might be
  • a presence in Teen Second Life where our students could collaborate both literally with their classmates and virtually with global visitors
  • Exploration of other Virtual Worlds like “Teen Second Life”. Virtual worlds can eliminate national and cultural barriers, remove physical limitations (everybody can fly in Second Life) and level the playing fied regarding age, sex or experience.

How could we improve how we prepare students for Mass Collaboration?

We need to embrace the wave of change and evolution in the same way our kids do – and embrace our kids as the agents of that change as well as the beneficiaries of it.

Then Again – maybe it’s a moot point, 2012 upcoming an’ all:)…