Lilium Pistil and Stamens: Innovation Research Program, Abstract, World Univ & School Infrastructure

Innovation Research Program
World University and School
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University
January 29, 2010



World University and School is applying for an Innovation Research Program grant for Cloud research (No. 6) because of our mission in reaching out to the entire world to provide a free, wiki-based education platform and our vision, through facilitating the development of broadband worldwide, to make our service accessible to under served parts of the world.


World University and School is a global, digital, open, free to students, future degree-granting wiki university and school, potentially in all languages, countries-states, subjects and at all levels, using a Wikipedia-with-MIT Open Course Ware model, for everyone, especially OLPC countries and the emerging world. Being a wiki-based education and information site, it's a place where anyone can teach, learn and edit content, via video, via virtual worlds, and in ways people create.


By developing a wiki school in every language and country/territory, WUaS will facilitate a wiki-conversation between languages and countries, in terms of teaching/learning, free and open software, and also vis-a-vis free degrees. It will generate a language database to facilitate translation technologies in all possible language combinations, which will become a rich resource for brain and language research on end-users, using, for example, neural 'hats.' WUaS makes possible, in creative ways, the production, and linkage, of potentially all open source teaching/learning content, in all languages in an infinitely extensible way.


There are about 4.7 billion people without digital access (around 2 billion people have digital access), and WUaS would like to reach all with 7,385 languages in 220 countries and territories, as online universities and schools. World University and School teaching and learning wikis are a rational for wiring the whole world. Not only will your hardware be useful in these countries, but as people in small languages, for example, start to teach to their web cameras, and upload this content to video-hosting sites listed at WUaS (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software#Video-Streaming_Hosting_Services), your hardware, with WUaS foreknowledge, can be used.


For this, WUaS needs ample resources to orchestrate not only bringing an open, teaching and learning university and school to the world, but also broadband development, through planning and partnering. The use of virtual worlds as integral to World University and School's open teaching and learning approach will require hardware such as laptops and desktops, with at least 1 gigabyte of RAM for current virtual worlds, such as Second Life and Open Cobalt, - to new markets around the world.


Due to the infrastructure realities in the poorer countries of the world our mission is twofold. First we endeavor to become the world's first completely free, degree-granting, multilingual, wiki-based website, partnering ourselves with organizations such as One Laptop per Child and UC Berkeley to provide access to education information and knowledge across borders. Secondly, we want to become the nonprofit organization that can provide Internet connectivity to under-served countries and areas; particularly those areas that already have programs such as One Laptop per Child and need ways to make those computers more meaningful and connected with the rest of the world.


For One Laptop per Child countries - Rwanda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, USA (Birmingham, Alabama), Uruguay, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Cambodia, & Papua New Guinea, and the other poorest countries in the world - this may include not only developing the open, free, teaching and learning, WUaS wiki (for illiterate people, too, since they can potentially access the web using icons and video on hand held computers), but also becoming the key WUaS Internet service provider for these countries.


In many of these countries we envision utilizing hand held computers with 2 by 3 inch screens, as output, because these are the most economic models and hence the easiest way to serve and connect with the greatest number of people. This also favors cloud computing where applications are primarily located on servers in cyberspace and from which printers are easily used.


In terms of organizational development, we envision utilizing UC Berkeley and Stanford graduate students to develop the teaching and learning wiki for WUaS for these countries and to research and assist us in our endeavor to provide the Internet infrastructure in targeted countries. WUaS is planning for printable materials from the WUaS wiki, as well as from hand held devices.


For the the Open Innovation graduate student at WUaS, this would entail developing a plan for becoming this Internet service provider's service provider, as well as copying and translating the existing English wiki section titles, and the text, but neither the software nor video, into the major languages of these countries, and beginning to develop a long term plan to wire these nine countries, by focusing on adding to OLPC Internet service provider approaches, and existing OLPC on-site, broadband information technologies.


As part of our development plan, we envision ways to bring broadband to the world, focusing particularly on the poorest OLPC countries in the world but including everyone, so that World University & School's open teaching and learning in all languages, countries, subjects and at all levels becomes a viable, and flourishing, resource for the world.


Because of our comprehensive vision in expanding the free flow of people's attention through online teaching and learning content, people's knowledge and information, as well as the related broadband infrastructure to accommodate learning, we feel that we would be a worthy organization to receive this Innovation grant. Not only does World University and School focus the collective intelligence of the connected population inside and outside enterprises, WUaS gives individual end users the knowledge and resources for teaching and learning and thus to predict the future, make their own decisions, and allocate their own resources.







(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/lilium-pistil-and-stamens-innovation.html - January 29, 2010)