Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years
Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is a term for the knowledge embedded within societies or large groups of
individuals. It can be explicit, in the form of knowledge gathered and recorded by many people; or it can be tacit or implicit, referring to the intelligence that results from the data generated by the activities of many people over time. New and vast information stores are being created in realtime by thousands of people in the course of their daily activities, some explicitly collaborating to create collective knowledge stores, some contributing implicitly through the patterns of their choices and actions. The data in these new information stores has come to be called collective intelligence, and both forms have already proven to be compelling applications of the network.
Explicit knowledge stores, such as Wikipedia, refine knowledge through the contributions of
thousands of authors; implicit stores allow the discovery of entirely new knowledge by capturing
trillions of key clicks and decisions as people use the network in the course of their everyday lives.
Google uses tacit data to continuously refine its search and ad results. Discovering and harnessing the intelligence in such data — revealed through analyses of patterns, correlations, and flows — is enabling more accurate predictions about people’s preferences and behaviours, and helping users understand and map relationships, and gauge the relative significance of ideas and events.
Relevance for Teaching and Learning in Singaporean K-12 Education
! Collective intelligence promotes peer-to-peer learning through knowledge networks that
grow by the minute as people share the information they’ve gained in specific disciplines
and fields.
! Implicit knowledge stores provide insight on the learning choices we make by tracking our
online searches and activity, and ultimately direct us to the discovery of new information.
! Knowledge networks such as Wikipedia encompass multiple points of view and allow
people to make instant updates to research and topics, unlike in printed textbooks by a
single author.
Collective Intelligence in Practice
! The Khan Academy is a vast but highly curated collection of videos that supplement
school curriculum: go.nmc.org/jlwbj.
! Researchers working with the National Institute of Education in Singapore are compiling
data to describe Singaporean students’ civic knowledge: go.nmc.org/ggpbc.