Cognitive Surplus
At the beginning of the summer I saw a great TED talk by Clay Shirky called, “How cognitive surplus will change the world,” and I have been mulling over it ever since.
The basic premise of the talk is that all humans have a certain amount of “cognitive surplus” that they can designate to different things. It is the mental energy you choose to use for things after you are done doing the things you have to do. For example, I choose to write this blog whenever I can find some cognitive surplus.
While having cognitive surplus is not new, Clay Shirky is making the case that technology is redefining how we are able to use our cognitive surplus. Technology allows us to use our cognitive surplus for communal value (i.e. contributing to and benefiting from networks like Facebook and YouTube) or to use our cognitive surplus for civic value (i.e. contributing to ushahidi or wikileaks for the betterment of society.)
The video has gotten me thinking of ways to create greater community within my classroom, while teaching students the value of civic contribution.
It occurs to me that each of my students probably has at least 2 hours each day of cognitive surplus. I think this is a pretty conservative estimate, considering I am often surprised by the amount of time that my students spend watching TV, playing video games, or interacting on the internet. Now, for a class of 30 students, that’s 60 hours a day and 420 hours a week of cognitive surplus. Imagine what we could accomplish as a class if we could all agree to donate a mere 10% of our collective cognitive surplus each week to some initiative that is of communal or civic value!
I think that tremendous strides can be made when developing a classroom community by creating opportunities for students to work together as a class. Students need to value the contribution of others and see that the outcome from collaboration is usually much bigger than the sum of each individual contribution.
At this point, I am not sure what our goal could be, but that’s probably a good thing — I would prefer to develop a goal as a class. At the very least, I would like our goal to have communal value for our class, or better still, some civic value for the school or the broader community. I am also not that concerned about having a goal that is curriculum related. Since we are drawing on the cognitive surplus of students and using technology to facilitate the process, we need not use much class time – the purpose is to build community, and not to teach science concepts. If you have some ideas of what we might try, please comment.
I think students are hungry for this kind of involvement.
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