The overarching question to be addressed this summer is the extent to which an international team can work productively to continually extend the limits of the possible in education. From a knowledge building perspective this requires a fundamental shift from belief- to design-mode: creative work with ideas of one’s own making as well as those of others, moving beyond teacher-driven inquiry AND student-driven inquiry to collaborative idea-driven invention. That’s what makes knowledge building knowledge building rather than learning as we’ve known it historically, or student-driven inquiry as championed in modern educational approaches.

An international team of students and teachers will come to take part in Tomorrow’s Innovators sessions, engineers will tackle challenges of next-generation knowledge visualizations (beyond knowledge sharing to knowledge advancement), and researchers will address issues such as scientific literacy and theory improvement.

Who Should Attend the Summer Institute?

Individuals:
Teachers, managers, graduate students, researchers, health care professionals, administrators, and policy makers who want to become better acquainted with knowledge building concepts and approaches.
Organizations:
Schools, ministries of education, universities, community organizations, businesses, health care organizations, etc. interested in introducing knowledge building into their organizations.

Pre-Conference Workshop

On August 4 there will be a special technology workshop. We have been meeting with teams involved in the Open Learning Initiative (see http://www.cmu.edu/oli/overview/) and preparing Knowledge Forum to support a broad host of collaborative co-design initiatives. The goals of the workshop are (1) to generate ideas for the next generation of Knowledge Forum and related visualization and assessment technology and (2) to organize an international "community source" initiative to implement these ideas. For more infomation contact Chris Teplovs (chris.teplovs@utoronto.ca).

Tomorrow's Innovators

An international team of teachers and students will introduce new teachers to knowledge building and work with teams of researchers and engineers to address thorny conceptual, research, and development issues. Issues to be addressed include: Can students actually engage in theory improvement? Can we build visualizations of knowledge work that extend beyond knowledge sharing to address challenges of continual idea improvement in a worldwide network of knowledge builders? More information

• Call for Presentations (Research Papers, Posters)

Date and Location:
August 5-8 2008
Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology
OISE/University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1V6