Chad Zimmerman wrote:
>
> Well, hmm....
>
> Maybe once I roll out the (very) basic framework of my idea, you will
> maybe understand
> what is rolling around inside my skull.
I encourage you (and everyone) to check out the Jr Summit
(www.jrsummit.net) run out of MIT (and paid for by Swatch, Sega and
others). I was at the actual summit part at the media labs this past
weekend, and it was wonderful. Kids from around the world that met
online, created proposals for a world they'd like to live in. they
elected 100+ representatives from their "online nation" (70+ nations
represented, including handicapped kids) and sent them to MIT for a week
to hang out with the likes of Disney Imagineers, Alan Kay, John Barlow,
Seymour Papert, etc. (who they immediately sent away, and then called
back when they needed advice) Came up with wonderful ideas, and they
were well presented.
One of them is Nation 1 (http://www.nation1.net/ -- remember as you view
it, this site is designed, built, written, and run by kids 8 to 15-ish).
It was a brilliant event. Among the great ideas they had was paying for
their stuff with banner ads: they get the ad space donated to them (cuz
they're kids), and then they sell it for .05 a clickthrough (tax
deductible) to fund everything from a microcredit bank for kids in
developing countries to borrow for education or basic needs, building
digital community centers for kids around the world, and building
Montessori-like schools where kids get paid to work at school (instead
of carpet factories) so they can justify to their parents being there.
They gave serious time to discussing the learning needs of handicapped
kids around the world and the fact that so much educational material for
kids done on the net is utterly inaccessible to them.
And one of their tracks involves helping to create resources by kids for
younger kids that help them learn young the potential for the net, and
to wire everyone at a young age and provide the kinds of things they
need to grow into digital citizens (kids teaching kids).
I'm convinced that most of these kids need nothing but us to get the
hell out of the way ;)
Anyway, the idea to bring away from it is this: instead of building a
resource for kids, build a resource that helps to encourage kids to
build resources for themselves (and their siblings). They know enough
about this stuff to take on the challenge themselves, they just need
leverage and advisors :)
B
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
