Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In schools, it is important for students to work in communities and to work on
advancing community knowledge. They need to experience knowledge building as
a dynamically evolving, collectively shared adventure. Bereiter and Scardamalia
(2003, 2006) identify two modes of working with knowledge: the belief mode
and the design mode. The belief mode is concerned with making ideas true and
the design mode is concerned with creating and improving ideas. Bereiter and
Scardamalia (2003) argue that traditional pedagogies operate mainly in the belief
mode. They focus on what learners believe or ought to believe. In contrast building
knowledge depends on the design mode. The belief mode highlights three questions:
(1) what are ideas good for? (2) what do ideas do or fail to do? and (3) how can ideas
be improved? (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006) Thus in school settings, it is important
for learners to generate their own research questions, articulate their own theories
or ideas, and to continuously improve them (e.g., Hakkairenen, 2003; Zhang et al.,
2007).
The principles of knowledge building have been realized in some well-designed
platform, e.g., Knowledge Forum (Scardamalis, 2004). However, due to technical
requirements, its use has been somewhat limited. More recently web 2.0 and its
associated technologies have been responding to the pedagogical needs of knowl-
edge building. Web 2.0 is providing the tools and support learners need to engage
in such fundamental knowledge building processes as social interaction, dialogue,
and sharing (Paavola, Lipponen, & Hakkarainen, 2004). Given that the goal learning
in Society 2.0 is for learners and other knowledge workers to create and generate
ideas, concepts, and knowledge (Rogers, Liddle, Chan, Doxey, & Isom, 2007), this
chapter argues that web 2.0 is uniquely well appointed to support knowledge build-
ing in a much wider space, transcend the traditional limit of schools, communities,
and traditional subject domains. However, the efforts to use web 2.0 to advance
knowledge building needs to be integrated into and informed by relevant theories of
learning
Web 2.0 and Knowledge Building
Web 2.0 consists of a collection of technologies or social tools. These social tools
support not only social interactions but also have the “flexibility and modularity that
enables collaborative remixability—a transformative process in which the informa-
tion and media organized and shared by individuals can be recombined and built
on to create new forms, concepts, ideals, mashups and services” (McLoughlin &
Lee, 2007, p. 665). Web 2.0 tools are designed to bring minds, thoughts, feel-
ings, and ideas together. In addition to sharing, communication, and information
searching, and in line with the design mode requirements of knowledge building,
web 2.0 technologies support users in co-creating and adding value to knowledge
(McLoughlin & Lee, 2007). The openness and democracy of web 2.0 allows
users to collaboratively mix, amend, recombine, revise, and comment on each
other's ideas. Web 2.0 technologies thrive on the concept of collective intelligence
