Crowdsourcing

Author Jeff Howe coined the phrase Crowdsourcing in an article that he wrote for Wired Magazine. In his most recent book, Howe describes how technology has dramatically reduced the distance between producer and consumer.

In Crowdsourcing, Howe provides many examples of a growing number of people who devote hours of their personal time to designing, developing, producing and sharing content and knowledge. They do this out of a passion for the topic or task rather than for money; although money does provide some incentive.

Two critical elements to crowdsourcing are that the crowd must be diverse and the tasks must be broken down into modules. A diverse crowd allows the best solution to emerge as lesser solutions cancel each other out. A modular approach allows the size of the crowd to handle large tasks quickly and efficiently.

Howe gives several examples of how crowdsourcing has had a significant impact on entire industries. He contends that crowdsourcing has the potential to transform how the world does business.

What are the educational implications of Crowdsourcing for education? What are the skills that today's students will need to work with and contribute to the "crowd?"