Knowledge Building Centre
The Knowl
edge Building Center is the heart of the Virtual Learning Commons. This large portal is filled with live learning events, which we also call knowledge building centers or KBCs. These are miniature Google Sites, environments constructed for working and learning as a community. These collaborative learning experiences are planned, developed, co-taught, assessed, and showcased from the larger portal. The learning experiences can be conducted totally online, only face-to face, or as a combination of both. The important characteristic is that educators join forces to deliver superior learning not possible if any of the teachers were to ‘go it alone’ in an isolated classroom environment. In other words, by combining the expertise of classroom teachers and specialists, superior results are likely to emerge.
Many types of project based learning experiences work very well in the KBC environment because the actual learning organization is available anywhere, at any time, and on various devices. This visual expands on some possibilities:
Virtual Knowledge Building Centers are:
● Collaborative construction zones between adults and students
● Places to learn, solve, work, create, think, achieve, shine, demonstrate
● Participatory learning
● Higher level thinking and metacognition
● Ventures into the real world of information
● Free or almost free
● Simple to create on a variety of technologies
● Super learning experiences
(See Appendix A at the end of the chapter for criteria)