Educational content ideas/data sets

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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:

Positions of Stars in the sky
Contours of continents (GIS data)
The value of PI to 10000 places
http://mondragon.angeltowns.net/paradiso/ValorDePi.html
Table of Prime factors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_prime_factors
Common Names of People
http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Nombres_Propios_de_Personas
Spanish last names
http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/Lista_de_Apellidos
Solar System Planet statistics
http://wiki.gleducar.org.ar/wiki/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)
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

Other Data Sets available

Collaborative Projects to Join

Science and Math Projects from CIESE
http://www.k12science.org/collabprojs.html

Collaborative and real time data projects for K-12 science and math education. Includes the following projects for Spring and Fall:

  • Down the Drain: How Much Water Do You Use?
  • The International Boiling Point Project
  • Human Genetics: A Worldwide Search for the Dominant Trait
  • The Global Water Sampling Project
  • The Global Sun/Temperature Project
  • Square of Life: Studies in Local and Global Environments
  • Bucket Buddies
  • Take a Dip
  • Mission to Eros: Rendezvous with an Asteroid
  • Noonday Project: Measuring the Circumference of the Earth

General

Central Intelligence Agency
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

The World Fact Book 2002. Collect and analyze data about different counteries.

U.S. Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/

Excel files throughout the site depending on the topic you are looking for.

Federal Reserve, Economic Data
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred/
FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov/

The gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies

StatLib
Datasets Archive:http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/

From the Carnegie Mellon University Statistics Department. Datasets from articles and books, and other sets submitted by readers.



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