Knowledge Building pedagogy (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996) offers a Knowledge Age framework for education by supporting students’ capacity for innovation. Students work in a community, building on each other’s knowledge, exploring and refining each other’s theories, and engaging in the progressive improvement of their ideas. This knowledge work is supported by Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia, 2004) the online environment that provides scaffolding supports for idea development. Teachers who are eager to explore Knowledge Building pedagogy and Knowledge Forum technology in their classrooms may not know where to begin, and application of Knowledge Building principles may not be obvious. To aid their process of invention, examples of Knowledge Building principles in action should prove helpful. The goal of this session is to provide such examples, and to collectively develop effective strategies, curriculum and resources that would allow newcomers to get started with Knowledge Building. Focus of the Session Knowledge Building pedagogy (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996; 2003) offers a Knowledge Age framework for education by supporting students’ capacity for innovation. Instead of simply learning about science, history, literature, etc., students engage ideas as scientists, historians, writers, and so forth. They work in a community, building on each other’s knowledge, exploring and refining each other’s theories, and engaging in the progressive improvement of their ideas. This knowledge work is supported by Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia, 2004) the online environment that provides scaffolding supports for idea development, graphical means for viewing and reconstructing ideas from multiple perspectives, and a variety of other functions that contribute to collaborative knowledge building. Teachers who are eager to explore Knowledge Building pedagogy and Knowledge Forum technology in their classrooms may not know where to begin, and application of Knowledge Building principles may not be obvious. To aid the process of invention, examples of Knowledge Building principles in action in a variety of contexts should prove helpful, as we collectively refine our understanding of education for a Knowledge Age. The goal of this session is therefore to provide examples of getting started with Knowledge Building pedagogy and technology, and also to collectively develop effective strategies, curriculum and resources to allow newcomers to get started. Questions to be addressed include: What resources do we need to help schools operate as knowledge-building communities? How can teachers build a community to support each other and innovation in education? How can researchers and teachers collaborate to promote idea generation, diversity, and sharing? What forms of interaction will support careful listening and refinement of ideas so that students engage in idea improvement with self-direction? What scaffolds will support increasingly high-level cognitive functions? These and other issues will be discussed and recommendations will be provided for enhancing and sustaining effective knowledge building discourse in school. The session will bring together researchers, teachers and school principles from Canada, Singapore, and the United States who have different, but complimentary perspectives on how to get started with Knowledge Building. CSCL 2011 Proceedings Volume III: Community Events Proceedings