Knowledge Building in Society 2.0: Challenges and Opportunities

Knowledge building is a widely recognized pedagogical approach to organizing school education. It emphasizes the collective cognitive contributions of students in collaboratively developing the knowledge bases through which classroom learning communities support intentional learning and autonomous learners (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006). Designing and developing learning environments to support effective knowledge building calls for a thorough understanding of its social, communicative, and cognitive dimensions. Technology has and continues to play a prominent role in this process. For instance, in transforming our perceptions of knowledge from that individually produced reified artifacts into collaboratively built dynamic creations, Web 2.0 technologies support the underlying theory and principles of knowledge building. By dramatically changing the online behavior of learners, technologies such as wiki, blog, social bookmarking, social networking, and tagging dramatically demonstrate how Web 2.0 can support the social, communicative, and cognitive dimensions of knowledge building. This chapter will discuss challenges currently facing the knowledge building and how emerging Web 2.0 technologies can meet the challenges of advancing our understanding of the new sciences of learning.

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