Knowledge Forum: altering the relationship between students and scientific knowledge

This paper explores the use of Knowledge Forum, a networked computer program designed to support knowledge building communication and to foster thinking and learning skills. The paper focuses on a Grade 5/6 classroom and looks at how students view scientific knowledge and what it means to learn science. A shift in pedagogy, along with the learning opportunities afforded by the communal database, impacted the learning environment and created changes in the structure of the learning activities, the ‘rules of the game’ of science and the sequencing of the curriculum. Specifically, the paper examines the knowledge transforming discourse that occurred both on and off the database as children worked to understand the evolution of the Komodo Dragon during an investigation of islands and island biogeography.