The last few years have seen a huge number of new platforms and applications emerge to try and get people more engaged in learning. Whether it’s Khan Academy, the MOOCs or even the plethora of citizen science based games that are hitting the market, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the field.
Despite all of this innovation, Wikipedia remains the fulcrum of our online learning (even though studies suggest it’s a guilty secret for many students).
Great though the website is, the wall of text that presents itself to you on more earnest topics may still be a little bit too much for younger readers.
Hence the idea for Wiki-Kids was born. The Israeli based project is an Apple based tablet formatted encyclopedia that is designed purely for children.
“When I sat down to design the app, I was dreaming about my own kids,” the developers say. “The project isn’t limited to one app. We are trying to spark a larger trend, a major change in the way we educate our children. Rather than encouraging their ‘grade-digging,’ we should be fostering their natural curiosity.”
At the moment, the curated encyclopedia only has around 240 entries, albeit 240 nice entries complete with friendly narration, appealing images and sounds, and a unique interface to enable 4-8 year olds to easily navigate.
The content is themed around the fields of animals, nature, landmarks, countries, space, food, musical instruments, the human body, transportation and occupations.
The theory is that children can understand concepts in less than 80 words, or under 30 seconds if in narrative form. The service also aims to provide context to the information presented.
For instance, if a tiger icon is tapped, the child is presented with both a descriptive entry for the creature, together with a number of images to describe their habitat and diet.
The developers worked alongside education experts and psychologists when curating the content, which was certified by kidSAFE Seal Program recently.
“This is not an encyclopedia that answers questions but rather leads to more questions,” they say. “We want to inspire curiosity. The principles governing reference material for adults and kids are very different—just ask your own kids. They have to experience something to really understand it.
“Once I relieved myself of the need to be relevant and to the point, my imagination let loose. Every entry became a challenge—to supply an entry point to more information instead of a mere fact. Ours is a ‘tapas’ encyclopedia, offering users a chance to sample all sorts of interesting things. We don’t want to satisfy kids’ appetite for learning. We want to encourage them to keep exploring,” they continue.
Suffice to say, with the content provided by an editorial team, there may be limits in how quickly they can scale, but it’s an interesting project to keep an eye on.
