Educational content ideas/data sets

For other ideas, see Educational content ideas

Interesting Data Sets

I know of Internet resources that present interesting data sets. But I don't undestand copyright laws enough to know if these sets can be incorporated into the OLPC project, so I'll just give examples of what I mean:

The value of PI to 10000 places

http://mondragon.angeltowns.net/paradiso/ValorDePi.html

The first 10000 prime numbers

http://www.aprendelibre.net/wiki/index.php/10000_Primeros_N%C3%BAmeros_Primos

Table of Prime factors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_prime_factors

Common Names of People

http://www.aprendelibre.net/wiki/index.php/Nombres_Propios_de_Personas

Solar System Planet statistics

http://www.aprendelibre.net/wiki/index.php/Datos_sobre_los_Planetas

Geopolitical Statistics

http://www.xist.org/default1.aspx

UNICEF Maps concerning children (spanish)

http://www.unicef.org/spanish/sowc05/maps.html

Dinosaurs Data files

http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/nature-online/dino-directory/about-teachers.dsml (not open)

Nutritional Content of Different types of food

Roller Coaster Stats (to study energy conversion)

Species Evolution Trees

Species Statistics

estimated numbers of individuals, geographic location

The Powers of 10 tutorial

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

Natural Disasters Statistics

Type, How many people affected, Affected regions, Dates (is "disaster" the right word?)

Properties of Elements and Natural Substances

uses

Most often used words in a language

Words that rhyme

Collections of words with ortographic or phonetic properties

Timelines

technology advances, evolution, life forms, creation of continents, planetary formation, human evolution, philosophycal movements. Like: the Histomap of World History, Compact timeline of global history

Heights of Skyscrapers

http://www.skyscraperpage.com/ (might be insulting to poor countries)

Miscfiles

http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/miscfiles.html

(Or localized alternatives)

• connectives (prepositions, pronouns, and the like)
• web2- Webster's Second International English wordlist
• web2a- Webster's Second Internations appendix english wordlist
• propernames- some common proper names
• airport- list of three letter codes for some major airports
• birthtoken- traditional stone and flower for each month
• inter.phone- international country telephone codes
• cities.dat- geographic coordinates of many major cities
• postal.codes- postal codes for US and Mexican states and
• languages- two-letter codes for languages, from ISO 639
• currency- currency abbreviations and names
• countries- country abbreviations and names and capital cities
• jargon.html- The Jargon file (same as the _Hacker's_Dictionary_)
• us-constitution- The Constitution of the United States of America
• us-declaration- The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

Project Gutenberg Data

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/8

 I'd say that data sets will be more useful if they relate to how a family and small community 

will use information to change their lives. While knowing some things may be interesting in the abstract, a family where each has one shirt and maybe one meal per day, will be more interested in how this technology will help them change that situation. So, knowlege sets should be structured to enable families to understand usable technology that can enable their available resources. A knowlege of medicinal plants and illness will be more useful than knowledge of the pharaceutical industry. A knowledge of AIDS transmission as well as malaria, etc, will be more useful than a knowledge of "Live AID", etc. A knowlege of soil biology will be more useful than the history of Con-Agra, etc. Knowledge is not really trivia, but instead understanding how physical and social process work. So, what is probably needed is a guide to useful knowledge appropriate to the particular social situation. That means that guides should show how knowledge is related, and structure knowledge aquisition from the general, common knowledge the community already has, to new, specific applications of that knowledge using the tools the computer can bring or link to. Teaching tools related to environment and human impact and energy efficiency deal with long-term changes that must start small. Appropriate technology such as creative use of fiber, metals, and other materials will be useful. How to make bio-gas generators and paper would be useful. An extremely large number of people deal with these issues everyday, and the computerized information can help them see relationships and provide technical guidance that they can use.