Gregg, Dawn
Communications of the ACM Vol. 53, Issue 4, 5 pages

Collective intelligence is a fundamentally different way of viewing how applications can support human interaction and decision making. Most pre-Web 2.0 applications have focused in improving the productivity or decision making of the individual user. The emphasis has been on providing the tools and data necessary to fulfill a specific job function. Under the collective intelligence paradigm, the focus is on harnessing the intelligence of groups of people to enable greater productivity and better decisions than are possible by individuals working in isolation. The processes involved in designing and implementing specialized collective intelligence applications are discussed in the context of DDtrac, a web-based application that allows for the easy collection and summary of special education data.