Brian Nierman’s Updates
Update 6: Collective Inteligence and Group Dynamics
Collective Inteligence is the idea that cognition and colloboration can yield a group inteligence. It is the notion that learning and skills acquisition occurs through the collective grappling of concepts and then resting on the laurels of people's creative thinking and individual skill-sets.
In my building students participate in this sort of learning each semester within our English curriculum. Our freshmen conduct a panel discussion on a social issue or Juniors colloborate on website building that illuminate researched informational support on a topic and so on. We do this while also manipulating group dynamics and putting people together with different skill sets, personalities, and needs. The learning aspect is that students conduct work within the common core standards the assignment dictates however the social learning is also a key endeavor. Students learn about accountability and group togetherness. They struggle with group dynamics but then are empowered to raise above it. Peers get the best out of people that they normal don't ever work with. All of this is under the idea that the workplace requires colloboration and creativity with out individual choice. Meaning, in the work place we usually don't chose our projects or our partners. We are assigned a task and group and told to get it done. We are trying to empower students for success within that realm and also increase our students' collective inteligence.