Collective Intelligence is the idea that individuals, working as a group, connect knowledge and solve problems more effectively as they share or compete with one another. Essentially, intelligence increases within the group as a whole as individuals provide and absorb their knowledge and skills. 

The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence expands this definition by including computers as an important piece of collective intelligence: 

The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence explores how people and computers can be connected so that
—collectively—they act more intelligently than any person, group, or computer has ever done before.

Collective intelligence, then, works in both the digital and offline realms. In the introdcution to Now You See It, Cathy Davidson offers a memorable example of collective intelligence. She describes a public presentation in which the speaker started a video of children passing a basketball and asked the audience members to count how many times the basketball changed hands. Davidson gave up almost immediately; she knows that these sorts of exercises are all but impossible for her. That left her to simply watch the video - and to notice something other participants did not.

When the video ended, the presenter asked the audience for their counts. After a few people shouted out their answers, he asked: "Who noticed the gorilla?" Davidson was one of the few people who saw the person in the gorilla suit walk across the screen. She "failed" the initial exercise (counting basketball passes) but succeeded in observing a detail her peers did not notice (Davidson, Now You See It, 1-3).

Collective intelligence, then, holds the potential of valuing the variety of ways people learn, observe, and interact with educational environments. Rather than assessing all students by the same standard (everyone must count or everyone must notice the gorilla), designing classes around collective intelligence lets students bring their many experiences, perspectives, dis/abilities, and knowledge to the learning environment.

MIT's Climate CoLab demonstrates how digital technologies can further expand the impact of collective intelligence:

Inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux, Climate CoLab is an open problem-solving platform where a growing community of over 120,000 people -- including hundreds of the world’s leading experts on climate change and related fields -- work on and evaluate plans to reach global climate change goals. (About the Climate CoLab)

Coordinating 120,000 people for in-person work toward the same goal is next to impossible. The website that serves as a hub for the CoLab and social media (namely, Twitter) allow contributors from all over the world to find each other, collaborate, and seeks solutions to the climate crisis. 

Putting collective intelligence to work in a classroom likewise benefits from the incorporation of technology. Google Docs let students contribute to and revise the same document, online forums hold the potential for considered discussions, and productivity apps or calendars remind students when they need to touch base with each other. While collaboration certainly can occur without these tools, collective intelligence mediated through technology has increased the possibility of collaboration for many students, researchers, visionaries, and creatives.