Crowdsourcing at Algonquin

Have you ever needed advice?  Have you ever needed help to solve a problem?  If the answer is yes then read on
I can think of countless times in my life when I needed advice or help.  For those times when I can't figure it out on my own what I generally do is ask friends and family for their opinion and/or their help.  It used to be that my only option was to call them on the phone, or mention it to them in person.  Then email came along and that made things a little easier.  I would send an email or even a group email to the people I thought would be good at giving me the advice or help that I needed.  Not long after that I also used texting which was faster and easier than email.  For many situations the assistance of family and friends was enough to help solve a problem, but there are other times where feedback and advice from more people would be helpful.

The Internet and the ability to  connect with people from all of the world allows for this to happen quite easily.  Social media and other web tools like survey monkey and google forms have changed the way we can get input from many people really quickly.  The whole idea of enlisting help from large groups of people on the Internet  is called "crowdsourcing". This term was coined about 10 years ago by Jeff Howe who is an editor for Wired Magazine.

Crowdsourcing is used in a variety of ways.  One of the more well known projects is the documentary film called Life in a Day which was created by Hollywood producer Ridley Scott in 2011.  The film is a compilation of 80,00 submissions from almost 200 locations around the world.  You may have also heard how brands and companies are using crowdsourcing to help with promotion and customer involvement.  Click here to read about how Doritos, Starbucks and Lays are crowdsourcing in the blog post entitled 4 Examples of Clever Crowdsourcing Campaign.  

To prepare our students for the future we need to teach them the following 21st century skills:collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking.  Using crowdsourcing in the classroom would touch on all of these skills.  Let's say for example students creatively design a real world problem that they want to try and solve.  It won't take them long to figure out that they need to do some research  or ask experts to help them find solutions.  Essentially they need to crowdsource!  In order to do this they would need to have good communication skills to come up with the right questions to ask.  As they start to receive answers to some of their questions they will need good critical thinking skills to decipher the validity and reliability of the feedback they are getting.  As they arrive at a solution they will need a creative way to present their findings.  All the while they are collaborating with their team members and all the people on the Internet who they have enlisted help from..  Here are a couple of links to other blogs that talk about ways teachers can use crowdsourcing in the classroom:
Introduce Students to the Power of Crowdsourcing with Zooniverse
Crowdsourcing Information in the Classroom

Recently at Algonquin the Students Working to Advance Technology(SWAT) team  helped me complete a crowdsourced video project called "A Day in the Life at Algonquin"(below).

We asked for photo and video submissions from the Algonquin community by hanging posters(right) all over the school posting on social media.

We then compiled all of the photos and videos and senior Kendall Sweeney created the final product.  Kendall did a fantastic job and we are so grateful for all her hard work.  The project introduced us to crowdsourcing, helped to build community at ARHS, and was a lot of fun.  I would like to give Amy Burvall credit for inspiring me to do this project.  I learned so much about using crowdsourcing in education by attending her session(The Cloud is our Campfire: Crowdsourced and Combinatorial Creativity) at November Learning's BLC15 conference last summer.  I encourage teachers to think about ways they might incorporate crowdsourcing in their classrooms, or better yet, ask the students for suggestions.  Good luck and have fun!