Project Classroom Makeover Assignment

Crowd-sourcing, credentialing, and technology are all important aspects of this passage. Crowd-sourcing is when a group of people, not just an expert, contribute and work together to find the answer to a problem. Modern technology, aka the internet, made it possible for this to first occur. A person can post any questions they have online, and receive answers from a large mass of people. It is unclear how accurate the final answer is, but the passage claims that a collective and unbiased answer is better than one from an expert. Credentialing is what experts do. An expert in a field will know more in that field than anyone else does, but they cannot have the same insight on the subject as a group of people, according to Davidson on page 51. This was proven once the IPod's were distributed to all the students. The IPod experts or employees of Apple, could not have come up with all the apps and learning strategies the IPod's ended up being used for on their own. This passage helps Davidson Segway into the idea that our education system needs to be fixed. It shows how when all students are forced to become experts on everything by themselves, they lose the ability to problem solve as well. By talking with others and playing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, a student could solve more issues.