Knowledge Forum is an educational software designed to help and support knowledge building communities. Previously, the product was called Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE). It was designed for a short period of time by York University and continued at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, to support knowledge building pedagogies, practices and research designated in this area. In 1983, CSILE was prototyped in a university course and in 1986 it was used for the first time in an elementary school, as a full version. CSILE was considered the first networked system designed for collaborative learning (Carl Bereiter webpage). The main contributors were Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter.
In 1995, the software was redesigned in accordance to World Wide Web philosophy by OISE in cooperation with Learning in Motion. The new generation was called Knowledge Forum (KF). Knowledge Forum is an asynchronous Computer mediated communication (CMC) technology that provides a shared discourse environment. It facilitates collaborative knowledge-building strategies, textual and graphical representation of ideas, and reorganization of knowledge artifacts.
The product is now used in a large variety of social contexts in 19 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology (IKIT) from OISE is the research group that takes charge of future developments of Knowledge Forum.
Read more about Knowledge Forum: Specifications, Software Features, Pedagogical Approaches, Other E-learning Platforms
Famous quotes containing the words knowledge and/or forum:
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 9:10.
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)