CSILE

• "CSILE (Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments) functions as a "collaborative learning environment" and a communal database, with both text and graphics capabilities. This networked multimedia environment lets students generate "nodes," containing an idea or piece of information relevant to the topic under study."

• CSILE is currently in use in a research program within the Toronto public school system.

CSILE appears to be a terrific way for students to familiarize themselves with technology, while allowing students create their mental representations of complex systems. It essentially allows students to have project based learning that is truly decentralized. The method links cognitive science and research into learning and knowledge data organization.

This software appears to have a graphics organizer, and creator tool built right in. A cornerstone of the CSILE approach is that students construct the contents of their database from scratch.

The principal idea is based on the philosophy that knowledge is a "human construction" that takes place as a "sociocultural" activity, and that it is through apprenticeship that young scientist's skills are acquired.

Their own testimonial

Reasons for bringing this technology into schools:

Support Thinking Processes

Stimulate Motivation and Self-Esteem

Promote Equity

Prepare Students for the Future

Support Changes in School Structure

Explore Technology Capabilities

CSILE check list:

The following list indicates the way in which the characteristics were accommodated or supported:

1. Multiple perspectives:
   Different perspectives are shared as students collaboratively build the database.

2. Student-directed goals:
   Students plan investigations and assign subtopics and tasks. (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992b, p.231).

3. Teachers as coaches:
   "Through the student's search for answers, the teacher acts as an "independent study", helping students recognize connections between previous knowledge, facts, and questions. They discuss inconsistencies, and they suggest information sources that students may have overlooked. The teacher does not try to be the "expert" in the classroom, but more of a model of how to be an expert learner."

4. Metacognition:
   The interface features a set of "thinking type" icons which "are intended to encourage deliberate attention to knowledge processes" (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992b, p.232).

5. Learner control:
   The students determine the problems they want to study and develop a plan and time line for exploring the problem.

6. Authentic activities & contexts:
   Through their knowledge building, students experience the complexities of scientific inquiry as it would be conducted by a scientist.

7. Knowledge construction:
   The prime focus of the project is to build up a knowledge database. Students actively focus on accumulating knowledge. Students focus on knowledge building rather than knowledge reproduction.

8. Knowledge collaboration:
   Central to CSILE is the practice of knowledge collaboration. Through a communal database, students respond to each others' work, share findings and make comments and suggestions.

9. Previous knowledge constructions:
   Students' questions are used to guide planning and research by teachers. Students must first record 'what I think I know' about a topic.

10. Problem solving:
    Problem-solving is fostered through students' participating in questioning and commenting on each others' work. Higher-order thinking skills are developed through the scientific process and deep understanding is developed through the inquiry cycle.

11. Consideration of errors:
    Students' work is commented and questioned by other students in the database thus allowing insight into their previous knowledge constructions as well as the opportunity to refine concepts.

12. Exploration:
    Students participate in a form of exploratory learning as they conduct research: "they learn the skills of finding, ordering, and using materials from a variety of sources. Students often make phone calls, write letters, and query experts in their pursuit of information."

13. Apprenticeship learning:
    The cycle of inquiry by which students plan and implement their inquiry involves an increasing complexity of skills, tasks and knowledge acquisition.

14. Conceptual interrelatedness:
    Students can see the interrelatedness of concepts through reading and commenting on each others' notes (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992b, p.236). The principle of "cross fertilization" maximizes opportunities for knowledge integration. Notes are not organized according to subjects (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992a, p.47).

15. Alternative viewpoints:
    Students are provided with the opportunity to view the varying viewpoints of other students as they build the knowledge database together.

16. Scaffolding:
    Through the 'cycle of inquiry' students have the opportunity to move beyond what they already know. Students move from what they already know about a topic, decide what they want to study, outline a theory of what they expect to find, and, write a statement called "I need to understand...'.



17. Primary sources of data:
    Students can question experts and conduct interviews in order to conduct their inquiry.

• Interestingly enough,This inner-city elementary school uses 176 computers in classroom project activities. Some Hawthorne classrooms use "Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments, which combines networking, hypertext databases, and support for cooperative learning. Hawthorne also has a Galaxy Classroom site for video-supported curriculum delivered through satellite dish.

Another CSILE project that I particularly appreciated was Boon Talk.

Boon Talk is an activity that focuses on involving students in multiple CSILE classrooms to share thoughts and ideas about past or recent books and projects. This is closely used and related to the

DIG Project.

Project Dig allows teachers and educators to organize and implement their standard based curriculum through a series of project-based actives that surround the curriculum's measurable objectives.




References
CSILE Program At Taft Middle School
http://198.247.136.12/TAFT/files1/csile.html Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments CSILE
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/csile.html

Scardamalia, Marlene. Journal for Applied Cognitive Science. Volume 3, Issue 3, July 1994.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1996). Computer support for knowledge-building communities. In T. Koschmann (Ed.), CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm. Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.