ABSTRACT
This study reports on social and technological innovations enabling an Aboriginal classroom to evolve into a knowledge building community. The main purpose for this research was to assess whether participants enculturated into a knowledge building environment would advance their textual, multimedia, and computer literacies. The social innovation was to develop a milieu that linked knowledge building theory (Scardamalia, 2000) with traditional Aboriginal education (Germaine, 2000). The premise was that individuals and groups in any context can create and work with knowledge; however a major barrier was that most participants believed that knowledge building and traditional Aboriginal education were incompatible The former is based on putting ideas at the center through writing and reading; and in the latter there is more emphasis on experiential and oral learning. The technological innovation was that students used an online collaborative multimedia tool, Knowledge Forum®, to set out their theories publicly, to consider how well their ideas account for known information, to assess the productivity of one theory versus another, and through ongoing discourse, progressively improve their understanding to produce cultural artifacts of value to themselves and others (Bereiter, 2002).
