Constructing Knowledge as a System of Relations

摘要

We examine how Nestor Navigator, a web browser and cartographer, supported the social dimension of the Transformational Process of information into knowledge (Diemers, 1999). We describe a qualitative case of a course in which the students had to develop a complex networked knowledge system that comprises interacting individuals, then- goals, "authentic" activities, constructed knowledge, and supports the related transformational process. Nestor was used to create a graphical information space, basedon the map metaphor, serving as a social mediator of knowledge construction. Not only does it allow individual, monologue-like publishing of pages and map creation, but more dialogic types of publishing including annotations and commentaries of existing maps. We argue that the hybrid web maps built by the students (representing both individual experience and shared conceptual structures) can support dialogue and negotiation better than other kind of documents.