Crowd Acceleration

I recently watched a TED presentation regarding crowd acceleration and then watched several Youtube videos to determine the value of each as it related to crowd acceleration. First lest's examine the meaning of crowd acceleration. As people we are often inspired by watching others and then wanting to improve what we have seen and make it better. We can accelerate this type of learning often by technology. If we take and apply this to learning we must have three important characteristics. One: Community: Others who share the same passion and are potential innovators, Two: Individual Visibility, Three: Success Mterics: Real time feedback that helps to rasie the bar, by measuring hits and ratings on sites such as YouTube. By watching what others do we can potentially reach millions and inspire greatness. We can also apply this to global education. Teachers can watch other teachers and gain insight and knowledge that may otherwise remain untapped. Students can view other students work and begin to build on what they see and possibly inspiring them to take this knowledge even further. When we watch these presentations we can decide on how to improve them and raise the bar. In many of the videos I recently viewed for this specific blog the videos related to the idea of using technology lessons vs. non-technology lessons. Do students perform better when teachers use technology to enhance their lessons? In each of the videos it was clear that the use of technology was of a benefit to students. One in particular that I liked was a music lesson using technology, http://www.authorstream.com/presentation/seannedanielak. This presentations was inspiring, and although I do not teach a music class I began to think about ways I could use music in my Language Arts lessons to help students remember important grammar rules and writing tips, similar to the older tunes of "Grammar Rock" but updated. This is an example of crowd acceleration. When we view others work and begin to adapt and build on it to fit our needs we can expand ideas and make them meaningful in our own scenario.