A few weeks ago I got a Facebook invite to attend a pillow fight on the National Mall which would be followed a few hours later by a pillow fight in Dupont Circle. I didn’t go, but a friend of mine went and said that a few hundred people showed up with concealed pillows and on cue, they all pulled them out for the fight. This event reminded me of a website for a group called Improv Everywhere that another friend shared with me a few years ago. This group uses the internet to coordinate strangers to play pranks in New York City. One of their more famous pranks that has spread to other cities is the “No Pants Subway Ride.”
Last week, another slightly humorous event was coordinated via Web 2.0 technologies - the tea party protests. These events weren’t given much coverage by the nightly news, but some of the 24 hour news networks couldn’t get enough. The amount of coverage that these networks devoted to the events garnered was oddly out of proportion to the number of people the story affected. Depending on who you ask, the estimates range from 250,000-500,000 participants which is on the low side for a national event. There were many reasons why these protests attracted so much attention, but one interested me in particular: these protests were not organized by any major group. Although Fox News’ Rick Santelli originally called for the protests and Fox News promoted them, the actual leading and organizing was done by bloggers, Facebookers and chatters.
This phenomenon, dubbed “smart mobs” by Howard Rheingold, isn’t anything new- there are plenty of examples from the last 10 years that show the power technology has to organize groups. Rheingold defines a smart mob as a group that uses a common means of communication to act collectively and coordinate. Where large scale movements usually needed the weight of a political organization to succeed, now aSeattle blogger can singlehandedly mobilize thousands of individuals. These smart mobs can go beyond just making a statement- in 2001, text messaging helped a group of young democrats organize to overthrow Joseph Estrada, president of the Philippines. While I may not agree with the tea party demonstrators, I do have to say it’s impressive that the organizers, most of whom had never organized a protest, managed to coordinate hundreds of protest sites and protestors.
According to Campus Technology, a similar shift is occurring in the classroom. Just as people are now able to be more active in organizing themselves, students are becoming less passive in the classroom. Professors are experimenting with social media tools to increase the interactivity of their lectures so there’s more dialogue and less one-way conversation. One professor has their students send in questions via Twitter during her lectures and then projects the questions onto a screen so students can see other students’ questions in real time. The professor explains that many students who wouldn’t normally speak up have a chance to share their ideas. As these tools become more integrated into the classroom experience, they’ll no longer be optional- they’ll become an essential part of the classroom experience, encouraging everyone to participate. Trent Baston says it best in the article, “Let’s assume that teachers and students really want to cooperate, the human trait that is most central to our survival.”
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