WorldLearningTree.com

Here is an application to allow us to share all our contact information. You may edit any person’s information and add whomever you wish. Please don’t add someone unless you ask their permission. Some may wish to keep their information private. However, as an MBA and a Computer Science student, I hope we can embrace technology and the power of networking to easily keep in touch.

Brittanica share is a bold new step to offer bits of their content for free.

Bloggers can get full and free access (for 1 year so far) and link to full articles that others will be able to see in their entirety when linked to.

Here is an example using “China” as the reference.

China

Someday soon, Mapping the real world back into it’s 3D representation will happen based on this emerging technology.

My vision is to support MMO RPG style games that provide educational benefit. They should be able to instantly play on any system with very little loading time and in any browser. Here comes the Unity Engine to solve this problem.

Find me at http://twitter.com/harleyw

I use netvibes ginger to keep track of concepts and websites that I take inspiration from while implementing my vision of worldlearningtree.

See my netvibes site.

Songza uses the best of web 2.0 tech to start playing any song you want instantly.

This is a fantastic Physics emulator. Powerful and educational.

PHUN at http://www.phun.at/

PBS was originally a public prodcasting company that used donations and other sources of income to fund providing free education to people. Elmo is pushing the technology boundaries with animatronics but what are the ELMO dolls doing to actually teach children. Elmo has become a toy for profit instead of a tool to teach.

What about the internet? WorldLearningTree.com promotes absolutely free education online but even the traditional company PBS is now offering PBS kids play which will charge for content? This is unfortunate. Education online should be free.

We have been working with the Pima County JTED on a database implementation project in conjuction with a Enterprise Data Management class taught by Dr. Sudha Ram’s MIS class as an elective for the Eller MBA program at the University of Arizona. Here is an example of the current list of schools that offer JTED programs as listed on JTED’s website which was created using DabbleDB.

The JTED mission is to provide the delivery of premier, rigorous career and technical education programs for all eligible students. In conjunction with business and industry, these programs will be focused upon both the educational and employment needs of Pima County.

6pli has created a visualization of bookmarks from del.icio.us. We sent them an email asking which tools were used to create it and if they could add our del.icio.us id. Our users can use the excellent tool to find an organized view of entertaining free educational online applications. See our del.icio.us bookmarks here at http://del.icio.us/worldlearningtree

We have discussed before how to keep costs minimal by using web 2.0 utilities that offer free services if you publish your work. We have decided to start using Dabbledb and here is an example of how we can imbed spreadsheet information which is of a similar format to our web links for learning.

Will Wright is quite an inspiration to us. One day, we will grow a company big enough to provide games that are as entertaining as his but push the actual educational factor up a few more notches. We applaud him for his latest game which allows the user to control a one celled organism and evolve to the point in which the entire universe can be explored. There are some lessons to be learned about evolution and failure scenarios which could lead to negative impacts on the environment. This had so much potential to be used as more of an educational tool. Imagine a modified game that allows the organisms to grow only when skills are learned and applied which are the same lessons that kids have to learn in school. Trick the kids into learning various concepts in reading, writing, arithmetic, etc by providing experiences in the game that teach these things. Have a look at his next game called Spore right here.

Web 2.0 enables games and applications to use live data and only get specific information that is needed from remote servers on demand. This means that applications load quickly since the initial information required is minimal and with a great design incremental information can be obtained just prior to or when needed. The following geographical game is an excellent example of the latest technology put to work to deliver educational information in an entertaining way using web 2.0 concepts.

Play Games at AddictingGames

The first thing one must do when researching is figure out how to most efficiently create, store and visualize their research. In this quest we immediately found free mind mapping software called Freemind and started putting it to use.

This was an excellent tool for tree structures but it does not allow for data that has multiple parents. For data that is structured more like the data in the world wide web where any object can have links to any others one needs to present the data similar to how they have done at the VisualThesaurus.

You may think that it looks interesting but it’s full potential can only be seen in 3D (or rather 2D over time) . For this we use another Web 2.0 company called Screencast-O-Matic to display the view in a movie type format.

Here is the resulting screencast. Most Web 2.0 companies list the html code that allows you to imbed the object in your site. By simply pasting this code you can see the application within your own web page. Here is the screencast. If you click where it says, “Play” then it will play the screencast. If you click on the image, it will open a new page and play the screencast.

Let us take a moment to illustrate our point about the power of Web 2.0. This site allows the usage of the application if you share the content online. Now think about the WorldLearningTree’s vision to provide online education for free and to be open and share what they do online. This means that costs can remain very low since tools can be used for free and the data can typically be stored on a remote server.

So what about the technology that the Visual Thesaurus used to create the application? Well, it is created with Thinkmap software. To our surprise, when we contacted the company we talked with the CEO Michael Freedman directly and got a 60 day trail version. It costs $5,000 for a license but it is so powerful that it may just become the first significant purchase on behalf of this company. The spider version of the software was used and there are three other interesting visualizations that can also be utilized. We were pondering why technology like this or mindmaps weren’t being used more to represent web sites. This brings us to another key point. If you haven’t found what you are looking for than the odds are pretty good that you just haven’t looked hard enough. We recently came across the WikiMindmap website that converts wikipedia entries into a mindmap format. We sent off an email just today to try and determine what else they plan for the future. Their response indicated they are expanding the usage of the technology and they would be happy to assist us in utilizing the potential technology if we can act together in an efficient way that does not impose on too much of their time.

Welcome to the WorldLearningTree blog. This blog will document our progress in building the company.

We have been doing research for about a month so there is much catching up to do.

Here is a summary of how we got were we are. An industry professional from a large company gets an opportunity to pursue a dual masters degree and work part time. The two degrees are a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and an MBA. An additional requirement to pursue an Entrepreneurship certificate is also a part of the program. After much research for a summer class in Entrepreneurship investigating Web 2.0, Computer Visualization and Modeling Software, Advanced Database Design, Education, Games, Storage Technology and a Medical Technology an idea came together to create the WorldLearningTree. This company would utilize everything learned to promote a free online place for children of the world to learn with highly entertaining content. The system would evolve over time from a simple web page of the best links to entertaining free education to a virtual world in which learning is essentially hidden within the world they are playing in.

We believe that people’s perception of entertainment and education are beginning to shift and Web 2.0 companies are now offering free and easy content. Universities are just now beginning to offer video game courses for credit (see University of North Carolina’s ECON 201 class). The challenge of this company is to utilize maximum efficiency to create educational content that can be entertaining and free for the entire world. This company will not be a not-for-profit but will use Web 2.0 systems which will publish everything we do online for all to see. This is a challenge as a private company since people can not easily see how a business can make money by offering a free online service and most people are not willing to be so open about what their company is doing. They are afraid that if you publish your business plan then somebody can easily copy it. To fully embrace Web 2.0 mentality we say that if we aren’t the best at what we do then let someone else to a better job. We are no longer waiting for someone to create an online system that any child in the world can use for free. It may also be of educational value to follow along with the site content and this blog so we can teach how to create a business. The suggestions and comments from the community can only help it do better.