So what we're doing is the intelligence that we're demonstrating
when we do that, when we offer that, when we do that project,
is intelligence which is collective in two very important senses.
The first sense is, I couldn't write it if I hadn't sourced a whole lot of stuff,
I found videos, I've read articles, I've searched the web, I've collected stuff.
And don't pretend that anything about volcanos is stuff that's in my head,
it's a social inheritance,
and what it's about is demonstrating my capacity to use that social inheritance.
So the social inheritance is the structure of a scientific report,
the structure of a geographic report and all the evidence,
the empirical matter that I find to put into that which I've collected, right?
So, in a sense, what I've done, it's a unique project,
nobody's ever written this particular project before.
It says something about me.
It says something about my capacities.
It's very much my own work.
But it's also the product of the collectivity,
which is the information resources around us and the conceptual resources that we've
developed around the practices of science, or the practices of geography.
So it's collective in that sense, and don't try and pretend it's individual.
It's about the way in which I source, or recognize that collective inheritance.
It's like the wonderful phrase of Isaac Newton's, which is he said look,
you know, what we do is we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, we've innovated stuff, but we have to recognize that we're standing on other
people's shoulders in all knowledge work, all learning, all intellectual work.
So it's about acknowledging that.
Now, if you do a test which just says, yes I got this answer right.
That assumes that it's your answer, an individual answer it doesn't actually go
back and trace the collective provenance of all knowledge.
So that's the first point.
The second point is, that in these new media environments, we can build highly
collaborative processes of learning, where in fact it's not just your own work.
Remember the old days, where you sort of put your hand like this so
the person beside you wouldn't see your work, right, in the old days.
It's not like that.
It's actually deliberately producing work that others review, give you feedback on.
And the result of that is, by the time you've got feedback, perhaps
from multiple perspective amongst your peers, and then you've done a revision.
The quality of the revision is partly due to the quality of the feedback
you've received, and the quality of other people's work
is partly the result of the feedback you've given them.
So you're in a collaborative process of give and take around knowledge.
Now I would argue that this is exactly the kind of person we need for
the workplace of the near future,
the scientist of the near future, the teacher of the near future.
These are the kinds of people we want to develop,
who can work in these highly collaborative,
constructive relationships with other team members with peers and so on.
So what we've been doing is, now the question then is, okay the final product.
Well whose is it?
Who are we gonna give them out to?
Because it's been a collective process where other people have helped you.
Well, you know, the thing about these e-learning environments via version
controlling, you can actually track exactly all the feedback that was given
and the extent to which you've taken other people's feedback.
Now we might actually then value the extent to which you took
other peers comments seriously, and you took on board their feedback.
And rather than saying, oh you copied something,
that someone else gave you that idea, or you copied it.
We might say, well what a great thing that you took on board this constructive
criticism, and you reworked your work based on that constructive criticism.
And we might say, oh, my goodness that was fantastic
feedback you gave to that other person, and we're gonna value that.
So we're gonna assess not just the work you do individually, but
because we can see all the changes you've made,
we can see all the comments you've made, the change you take onboard.
We can value your work as a collaborative player in a knowledge environment.
So, in a sense, these are these two quite fundamental aspects
of what I call collective intelligence.
Now, this is a really profound shift away from the historical and
traditional, individualized approach to assisted learning,
and even defining what learning is.
All right, just to mention briefly, off on a tangent,
some of my educational heroes, which are sort of on the sidelines.
This particular hero here is Maria Montessori,
a very, very important person in the history of education.
And in a way, a lot of what we're trying to do aspirationally in these learning
environments are ideas that she invented and
thought through at the beginning of the 20th century.
So in a way, what we're doing with technologies now are things that have
always been a bit hard to do.
But in a way, her aspirations back then
things that we now can do somewhat more easily and therefore we should do them.
So what were her ideas?
Well, she worked in very, very poor neighborhoods in Rome in the first years
of the 20th century, and she built up a system of experiential education
where the technologies then were actually artifacts.
So rather than learn stuff off by heart, rather than memorize stuff,
you work with rods, where you concretely felt geometrical concepts.
You had maps of the world where you move the things around,
where students worked in little activity groups.
So what there was around a Montessori classroom,
people probably know this pretty well, but there are different stations,
activity stations where small groups of students work on particular activities.
Now, in the traditional classroom, this wasn't that easy to do.
In fact, it's ideally suited for very young children, and
that's why it was adopted to a large degree with younger children, but
it became impractical for logistical reasons with all the children.
But now what we're saying is that a lot of these ideas around experience,
around group work around active learning that she was devising, and
thinking about over 100 years ago are themes now which we can
do very nicely in our e-learning environments.