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
- http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964
- 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)
(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
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 pharmaceutical 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.
You are talking about knowledge and this page is about data sets/tables