The Networked Student 2.0 aka "Collective Intelligence"

Okay now. This youtube video rocks for several reasons. While I don't suggest we have our middle school students ONLY using tools like this, I do think it is vital that we start preparing them for this kind of life. Today's successful college student needs to have these skills available to them - believe me I took a Chemistry course last semester and I was using these tools to extend my mastery of the chapters we were covering.



It is within our "charter" to get our kids started on this journey. I believe that middle school is not too early to get started in modeling their skills. For example, a 7th grade LA curriculum requirement is to write a research paper: how many middle school students even know how to validate a web source? Do they know how to write a research paper using web sources - ones that are valid?

At about 4:25 seconds into this video you'll see how you, teacher, can assist in this learning process - even at the young, tender age of our middle school students.

Now the one thing that I struggle with is that our students often lack the rudimentary skills to even form a sentence (subject-verb, capitalization, tense, topic sentences... the list goes on!) That's the focus of your teaching because it's part of what's handed to you, but now there's good reason to teach those basic skills within a 21st Century framework - use blogs, wikis, the web to reinforce those skills and you'll be prepping the students for what comes next while your teaching and honing the LA skills that they should have learned before even entering our school.

[Rant follows] And yes, I'm getting really tired of the whole "web2.0" tag. A better term is "collective intelligence" - one that's used in the more refined circles of elite intelligentsia. Oh yes, there's a "web3.0" term that's been tossed around for several years too. It's also called the "Semantic Web" - something my wife has centered much of her research around as a PhD at UCD. Ok, I'm done ranting!