Collecting, Collaborating, Coordinating

The most interesting aspect of our reading this week was the idea of accessing collective intelligence discussed in both Jenkins' and Beach's articles. Having participated in Dr. Beach's media studies course, I can attest to the fact that "importing images and video clips from the media into [our] blogs…enhanced the quality of [our] critical analysis of the media" (Beach, p. 5). Our use of these digital literacies to understand and further explain them now seems obvious, but it was not something I had even considered at the time. Likewise, with our own students, we often forget to make use of the vast array of worldwide knowledge—or even the local knowledge available within our own classrooms—to help formulate understandings of our reading or writing practices.

I especially appreciated Jenkins' ideas regarding appropriation in light of accessing collaborative knowledge. As he discusses, our current society's focus on autonomy and ownership often ignores the process of collaboration that goes into a great creative work (p. 32). Jenkins says that "the digital remixing of media content makes visible the degree to which all cultural expression builds on what has come before" (p. 32), which I find fascinatingly similar to Bakhtin's view that all speech or dialog is built on what precedes it and influenced by what follows (Nystrand, p. 8). These similar ideas perfectly express our need as human beings to embrace our collective knowledge and understand that we are influenced by those around us. The more we can work together in our learning process and pull from our many different knowledge sources, the richer our own work and our society's work can be.

I can't resist including one more quote—these authors say it so much better than I. Levy's (2000) definition of "collective intelligence" states "…everyone knows something, nobody knows everything, and what any one person knows can be tapped by the group as a whole" (Jenkins, p. 39). What an awesome picture of a classroom!

My link this week is for a website called Students Speak Out. From what I know, it started out as a way for Minneapolis Public Schools students to share what they think about their schools and influence adults in their decision making regarding those schools. They also encourage adults to ask questions and develop forums to answer those questions. It looks like they might have branched out to more students than just MPS, but I'm not positive who participates. I think it's pretty open and the discussions are great. The forums range from photos to blogs to videos, so very appropriate to our new digital literacy age of information and collaboration.