Crowdsourcing is the new darling in the business world but some teachers see a place for this innovative approach to collaboration in education too. Businesses are turning to crowdsourcing to find, fund, and innovate tomorrow’s million-dollar idea, simply by asking potential customers.
What is Crowdsourcing?
Instead of spending millions of dollars on research, development, manufacturing, and marketing many businesses are looking for help and feedback from large groups of people through an open call format. These groups or “crowds” literally become partners in the business project.
“Over the past several years people from around the world have begun exhibiting an almost totally unprecedented social behavior: they are coming together to perform tasks, usually for little or no money, that were once the sole province of employees.”
– Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing
Educator’s Get In on the Act
In this social content rich world of ours, learning a new skill, language, or finding a solution to a problem has never been easier. The natural evolution of this behavior is that students and professionals are turning to each other.
Crowdsourcing taps into groups of people who want to participate, collaborate, and donate. There are countless numbers of retired teachers, educators, and other professionals who would still like to contribute something to education. There are others who love literacy, math and other school topics that work in fields outside of education.
When applied in the classroom, crowdsourcing democratizes the experience, as teachers are forced to ask students how they want to learn something. Many instructors are looking for expertise in a variety of areas, crowdsourcing groups could help with budget issues, purchasing, and data analysis. Teachers could also benefit with guidance in lesson design, research, or funding for a special class project. Reading Horizons offers its own funding program called Lemons for Literacy. If you'd like to learn more about Lemons for Literacy, click here.
So, how can we simply and practically apply crowdsourcing in the classroom today? When people have problems, the first place many of them look is online. Go to the Answers section of LinkedIn (you’ll need to join this free site first) to ask questions and learn about education grants, or ask a discussion group to vote between two different books that your students could read, or go to the psychologist group to inquire about how to handle a student who is facing challenges.
The “crowd” definitely has something to offer. Let’s figure out a way to harness this free resource and benefit our students. Are you crowdsourcing yet? Share your experiences here.