collaboration

15 Aug 09

Tran|script, by Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » Cooperation, not Collaboration

Downes makes the point repeatedly that we talk too much about collaboration (which is something new technology allows us to do better) and not enough about cooperation (which is something the network allows us to do for the first time on this unprecedented scale).

The neat thing about cooperation is that if you can structure a solution to a problem as a cooperative one rather than a collaborative one you can solve very big problems in a very short amount of time — because at it’s best, cooperation requires simply that you do what you normally do, but in a way that allows cooperation.

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08 Jul 09

Wikinomics» Blog Archive » Diminishing Returns of Collaboration

# At an individual level people suffer from cognitive overload. As people get busy and collaborate across a multitude of projects, the brain gets distracted, and the quality of the output suffers. In short, one person can only do so much.
# At a project level where you run into a situation of ‘too many cooks spoiling the broth.’ In short, only so many people can do one thing.

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collaboration

15 Apr 09

Bering Strait School District Wiki

Amazing K-12 wiki that has over 11,500 pages.

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wikis 3rdedition classroom collaboration

14 Apr 09

Introducing the Collaboration Curve - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org

The evidence for the collaboration curve is, as yet, mostly anecdotal. But these curves may explain the rise of network-centric efforts ranging from open source software development to "crowdsourcing" to "networks of creation." In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. These leaps in performance describe the shape and power of the collaboration curve, a new force in our professional and personal lives that turns the experience curve on its side, and explains why the whole of us, working, playing, and, learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts.

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learning collaboration network_literacy john_seely_brown

What happens, for instance, as you add more participants to a carefully-designed environment? The online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) provides an intriguing example. More than 11.5 million people around the world now play World of Warcraft. Performance in the game is measured by experience points, which are awarded to players as they successfully address progressively more difficult challenges. It takes roughly 150 hours of accumulated game play to earn the first 2 million experience points but players on average are able to earn another 8 million experience points in the next 150 hours of accumulated game play. Even though, within the game, experience points become more difficult to acquire as you advance, World of Warcraft players are improving their performance four times faster as they continue to play the game.

How? Most improve their performance by leveraging a broad set of discussion forums, wikis, databases, and instructional videos that exist outside the game. Here the players share experiences, tell stories, celebrate (and analyze) prodigious in-game achievements, and explore innovative approaches to addressing the challenges at hand. This "knowledge economy" is impressively wide and deep: in the US alone, the official forums hosted by Blizzard Entertainment contain tens of millions of postings in hundreds of forums. And those are just the forums hosted by Blizzard. Independent forums are proliferating at an even faster rate.
- What's interesting here is the self-directed passion-based learning that takes place in the context of learning the game. There are few teachers, many learners. - on 2009-04-14
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The evidence for the collaboration curve is, as yet, mostly anecdotal. But these curves may explain the rise of network-centric efforts ranging from open source software development to "crowdsourcing" to "networks of creation." In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. These leaps in performance describe the shape and power of the collaboration curve, a new force in our professional and personal lives that turns the experience curve on its side, and explains why the whole of us, working, playing, and, learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts.
- "The whole of us, working, playing and learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts." Love that quote. - on 2009-04-14
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New Rules for Mass Collaboration | Leading Change | Fast Company

We are experiencing the most dramatic shift in the nature of business and work since the industrial revolution. The traditional management model is based on the premise that large organizations are about bringing together large numbers of people in central locations and then organizing their work. In the last 15 years with the rise of the Internet and electronic technology we are seeing the rise of mass collaboration and globalization. The premise that large numbers of people are gathered in one place is no longer true.

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collaboration shifts quoteable mustread09 social

We are experiencing the most dramatic shift in the nature of business and work since the industrial revolution. The traditional management model is based on the premise that large organizations are about bringing together large numbers of people in central locations and then organizing their work. In the last 15 years with the rise of the Internet and electronic technology we are seeing the rise of mass collaboration and globalization. The premise that large numbers of people are gathered in one place is no longer true.
Collective learning needs to replace central planning as the foundation of strategy, and self-organization of knowledge workers needs to replace the hierarchical organization of workers.
- Interesting turn of the phrase, collective learning. - on 2009-04-14
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- Organizations need to tap into their collective learning. When organizations do this, they can move far faster than through traditional debate-style meetings. The most untapped resource in America today is the collective knowledge of its workers. It’s all fully paid for. What organizations lack are processes to tap into it. A hierarchical organization is a tremendous obstacle.
- Organizations are going to learn that if they don't have quick access to their collective knowledge, they are not going to be able to keep up with the market, the competition.
  - Pretty powerful line. Inherent in that statement is that we are able to produce and publish that knowledge in transparent and effective ways. - on 2009-04-14
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13 Apr 09

Edge: THE NEXT RENAISSANCE: A Talk By Douglas Rushkoff

The next renaissance (if there is one)—the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we're using—the biases of these media—cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center—like a centrally issued currency—the network creates value from the periphery.

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shifts network_literacy collaboration must_read

The next renaissance (if there is one)—the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we're using—the biases of these media—cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center—like a centrally issued currency—the network creates value from the periphery.
- This echoes Shirky to a t. - on 2009-04-13
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This means the way to participate is not simply to subscribe to an abstract, already-written myth, but to do real things. To take small actions in real ways. The glory is not in the belief system or the movement, but in the doing. It's not about getting someone elected, it's about removing the obstacles to real people doing what they need to to get the job done. That's the opportunity of the networked, open source era: to drop out of the myths and actually do.
5 more annotations...
- The first great renaissance in media, the invention of the alphabet, offered a tremendous leap for participatory democracy. Only priests could read and write hieroglyphs. The invention of the alphabet opened the possibility for people to read or even possibly write, themselves.
  - Compare to Yancey piece - on 2009-04-13
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- Likewise, the invention of the printing press did not lead to a civilization of writers—it developed a culture of readers.
- Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. Everyone is a blogger, now. Citizen bloggers and YouTubers who believe we have now embraced a new "personal" democracy. Personal, because we can sit safely at home with our laptops and type our way to freedom.
- But writing is not the capability being offered us by these tools at all. The capability is programming—which almost none of us really know how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our blog text in the appropriate box on the screen. Nothing against the strides made by citizen bloggers and journalists, but big deal. Let them eat blog.
  
  At the very least on a metaphorical level, the opportunity here is not to write about politics or—more likely—comment on what someone else has said about politics. The opportunity, however, is to rewrite the very rules by which democracy is implemented. The opportunity of a renaissance in programming is to reconfigure the process through which democracy occurs.
  - This is an interesting point, one that connects with Prensky here: http://www.edutopia.org/programming-the-new-literacy - on 2009-04-13
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- Open Source Democracy
  - What about the idea of Open Source education. The idea that we teach kids to reprogram their learning as needed. I love the idea that open source education represents a "disengagement from the the myths through which we abdicate responsibility, and a reclamation of our role as citizens [students] who participate in the creation of the society [education] in which we want to live [receive]." That is the biggest shift here, isn't? The who owns the learning question? These "myths" of how learning and education have to be meted out, which allow us to abdicate responsibility for our own learning. A "collective and participatory" education... - on 2009-04-13
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09 Apr 09

Flexbook

Welcome to the CK-12's FlexBook Tool
A place where you can find and customize content.

21st Century Physics book being used by Va. Very, very cool example of co-creation.

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pres_ideas open_content textbooks collaboration

24 Feb 09

TakingITGlobal - TIGed - Educator Central

Tools to help TIGeducators connect with each other, find exciting activities for their students, and learn more about TIGed.

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3rdedition collaboration

06 Dec 08

World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others | Edutopia

Welcome to the Collaboration Age, where even the youngest among us are on the Web, tapping into what are without question some of the most transformative connecting technologies the world has ever seen. These tools are allowing us not only to mine the wis

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willrichardsonarticles willrichardsonportfolio collaboration learning njplp21 oceplp21 indplp21 advisplp21 pearlsplp internationalplp21 illohioplp21

16 Nov 08

The Future Of Online Collaboration: Interview with Howard Rheingold

I see the magic of the Internet is to connect people who share an interest and now we see just a huge proliferation of tools for doing that. You have people available at the periphery of your attention. We have instant messaging.

You can communicate with

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literacy network_literacy collaboration

09 Oct 08

Social networking sites help companies boost productivity - USATODAY.com

"The spread of the workforce has put a premium on tech tools that let people collaborate, learn and share info from different parts of the world," says Ross Mayfield, co-founder of business-software maker Socialtext. He cites studies that show 85% of all

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njplp21 oceplp21 indplp21 advisplp21 pearlsplp internationalplp21illohioplp21 collaboration ning social shifts business enterprise

03 Apr 08

Coordination, Cooperation, or Collaboration

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collaboration literacy

Collaboration entails finding
the right group of people (skills, personalities, knowledge,
work-styles, and chemistry), ensuring they share commitment to the
collaboration task at hand, and providing them with an environment,
tools, knowledge, training, process and facilitation to ensure they
work together effectively

19 Mar 08

Cloud Computing

The shift from computer to network in terms of software has huge implications for education as well, specifically in terms of collaboration.

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collaboration education pearlsplp plpconsortium shifts wnyplp

Sometime in the past few years, most of us began to change the way we use our personal computers. We stopped going out and buying new software programs and installing them on our hard drives. Instead, we started using the internet as our computer, tapping into the vast quantities of software and data flowing through the network. Our powerful desktop and laptop PCs have been turned inside out. Most of their value comes not from what's inside them but from the network they're hooked up to. They've become, essentially, terminals.
Cheap, plentiful electricity changed society and culture, spurring the rise of mass media, mass consumerism and modern advertising. We can expect that cheap, plentiful computing will have similarly far-reaching consequences, once again overturning many of our assumptions about how we work and live.
3 more annotations...
- The success of a software program is coming to be judged not by unit sales but by the ability of the provider to attract an audience, hold that audience's attention with interesting data and tools, and deliver relevant ads to it.
- In other words, those huge server farms are not only transforming the software industry. They pose big and growing competitive threats to many traditional publishing, broadcasting and advertising firms. The media business has already gone through wrenching changes thanks to the web, but the upheaval is just in its early stages.
- It's also transforming the way companies operate and employees collaborate. Rather than e-mail a version of a document and get multiple copies back, all with different edits, the cloud enables all the employees to work collaboratively off the same document, which lives, of course, in the cloud.
  - This is a huge shift for edcation as well. - on 2008-03-19
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