The Prince Edward Island presentation at the 2003 IKIT Summer Institute noted the potential for PEI as a testbed in which knowledge building in education might contribute to the shift to a knowledge based economy from one based primarily on farming, fishing and tourism. The presentation proposed a cross-sectoral intersection of personnel from the University of PEI (post-secondary), K-12 (schools) and Department of Education in Knowledge Forum databases of common concern. It noted several potential collaborative databases and concluded, Without trivializing the immensity of the challenge, we feel that we can achieve some sort of sustainability if there is sufficient cross-database engagement. We therefore want to see preservice teachers and university faculty engaged in departmental and schools databases. Guest teachers may contribute to university databases, as may students. The questions a year later are twofold:

1) Which, if any, of the proposed collaborative databases saw cross-sectoral engagement, how much, and of what kind? What factors contributed to that engagement?

2) To what extent could the engagement that did occur be considered part of a knowledge-building trajectory and therefore a contribution to a sustainable knowledge-building community?

The presentation this year draws on quantitative data generated by the Analytical Toolkit (ATK) and qualitative illustrations of knowledge-building principles drawn from the databases to address these two questions. More specifically, it will begin to explore the factors in a culture or ecology that contribute to or inhibit a shift towards knowledge building.