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2007 ORION Learning Award Winner
Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology (IKIT)
IKIT Director Marlene Scardamalia as she accepts the ORION Learning Award at the 2007 award presentations in Toronto June 4, 2007.
The Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology (IKIT), based at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, continues to have a growing impact on the world of education.
Founded at the University of Toronto in 2001, IKIT grew out of a 25-year history of theoretical research, research-based innovation, and technology development. With funding support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Initiative of the New Economy, IKIT has helped to build communities that advance beyond best practices in education, knowledge work and knowledge creation.
To unite these communities, IKIT hosts international virtual meetings, an annual Summer Institute, and the Knowledge Society Network, with more than 400 active members in more than a dozen different disciplines and 20 countries. The innovations these communities pursue are grounded in the concept of knowledge building, the collective advancement of knowledge as a social product, an idea that is now prevalent in science and industry but is only beginning to take hold in education.
The results of these innovations show up in the work of students. These range from pre-kindergarteners producing theories to explain puzzling observations, to elementary school students presenting their research at meetings of adult professionals and analyzing and reporting on their own knowledge building activities, to university students producing prize-winning medical illustrations through collaborative knowledge building effort.
IKIT has brought a number of awards and innovations to Ontario, including an award for the first collaborative networked learning environment and a World Cultural Council award for worldwide effort to advance educational opportunity.
IKIT promotes knowledge building via professional development activities, publications and, above all, demonstrations with real students in real classrooms.
Since April 1, 2003, IKIT has hosted 56 Virtual Meetings, attended by 370 different participants from 17 countries and 109 different institutions. These are idea-centered meetings. For instance, educators in Ontario, Barcelona and Hong Kong plan a joint knowledge building experiment in which students develop theories, movies, and advance understanding of global warming and potential solutions.
The results have been remarkable. In 2002, for example, a group of elementary students presented the keynote event—the results of their IKIT-inspired research-- to a conference of the U.S. National Academy of Education. Their articulate grasp of knowledge building astonished the audience of adult scholars and educators.
IKIT's primary technological development is Knowledge Forum, the founding knowledge building environment, an extension of the first collaborative learning environment, CSILE (Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environment). The technology has been constantly evolving since 1983 and can be used in education, kindergarten through post-graduate levels, health care, business, community organizations—any group committed to collaborative knowledge work.
It differs from other collaborative environments by having features that empower rather than control the users and encourage them to rise above conventional learning. Knowledge Forum is now in use around the world and increasingly being imitated.
Knowledge Forum also supports the Knowledge Society Network, which spans the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and enables the Toronto IKIT team to remain the "hub of innovation" for educational work in the area of knowledge creation, with the support of a Knowledge Innovation and Technology lab made possible through funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.
The awards and endorsements that IKIT has received from many countries and all levels of education speak to the impact of its leadership and innovation being felt around the world.
For more information, visit http://ikit.org and www.knowledgeforum.com.
Back to the 2007 ORION Award winners page
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