Freerice grant application
From CyberOne Wiki
WHAT PROBLEM DOES YOUR PROJECT ADDRESS? WHY IS THIS ISSUE SIGNIFICANT? WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE PROBLEM/ISSUE TO THE CORPORATION'S CURRENT PROGRAM INTERESTS AS NOTED IN ITS INFORMATION PAMPHLET AND WEBSITE?
FreeRice, an innovative take on the concept of "food for thought," furthers open access to free education and combats hunger. Educational attainment is an indicator of individual success and productivity within society. Nationally, many educators face the challenge of reforming education to narrow racial and socio-economic achievement gaps and increase high school graduation rates. Too few students are actively engaged in their education and lack the necessary skills to become productive members of their communities. FreeRice harnesses the accessibility of the online medium to promote education and provide an interactive resource through which students can challenge themselves intellectually.
FreeRice also seeks to address the issue of world hunger by providing food for the less fortunate. Millions of people around the world suffer from hunger and hunger-related illnesses. Over 25,000 people die each day from hunger-related causes, the majority of them children. FreeRice incorporates philanthropy and civic engagement into its motivation and reward structure. As students use the FreeRice website and answer questions, they not only enrich their own knowledge, but they work towards alleviating world hunger. For every question answered correctly, twenty grains of rice are donated to hungry individuals through the United Nations World Food Programme. The site’s simple interface and rapid-fire mode of play have attracted a large community of participants; nearly 50 billion grains of rice have been donated in its first year of operation.
While millions of people would receive food through this project, the most important beneficiaries are the students who expand their knowledge and learn to view it as a powerful resource to help others. FreeRice has the potential to be a revolutionary website for self-learning and a valuable teaching tool for educators and parents. Its reward structure and mission have attracted a large community of learners that is unlike that of any other educational website. Users can strengthen their understanding of myriad subject areas such as English vocabulary, geography and multiplication. Because of the established audience and its philanthropic approach to learning, FreeRice is uniquely positioned to foster civic engagement and become a free, self-sustaining educational platform.
WHAT STRENGTHS AND SKILLS DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION AND PERSONNEL BRING TO THIS PROJECT? WHAT MAKES YOUR ORGANIZATION THE RIGHT ONE TO CONDUCT THIS PROJECT?
In order to realize the goals that have been set for FreeRice.com, the creator of FreeRice, John Breen has partnered with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University under the care of Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, the founder of the Berkman Center. The Berkman Center is the ideal organization to head up this project for three specific reasons: 1) the Berkman Center has the expertise and experience to combat any obstacles that may arise in seeing this project through to fruition, 2) the Berkman Center has a close working relationship with the site creator, John Breen, which will be critical to staying true to the original goals and visions of the site, and 3) the Berkman Center has maintained an unwavering commitment to the mission of the site and has access to educators that will contribute to developing a more comprehensive educational experience in cyberspace.
The Berkman Center was established in 1996 and has been working for over a decade to establish access to information via the Internet. The Center is comprised of Harvard faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers and virtual architects that have been working together to address some of the key challenges and opportunities to increase access to knowledge through cyberspace. Through projects such as the Educational Fair Use Project, designed to facilitate the widespread circulation of best practices regarding fair use among teachers and scholars, the Berkman Center has researched and gained the necessary expertise on developing cyberspace into a tool that can be used to promote access to knowledge. As FreeRice grows and becomes more widely utilized, the Berkman Center will be able to adequately address any issues that arise with regards to promoting the site and maintaining its usefulness to educators around the globe.
In addition to having the requisite expertise and experience in areas of Internet education, the Berkman Center has also developed a close working relationship with FreeRice-creator, John Breen. In May 2008, the Center awarded Mr. Breen with a Berkman Award for his outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society through FreeRice.com. Since awarding Mr. Breen with this prestigious award, the Center has been closely collaborating with him on further development and support of the site. Having worked so closely with the creator, the Center has a clear vision of what the site can embody and has laid out a plan of action to accomplish the goals that have been set. No other organization has invested the time and effort into understanding the goals of the site creator and bringing in teams of qualified individuals to try to bring those goals to fruition.
Finally, the Berkman Center’s dedication to the mission of FreeRice.com has been unwavering over the past few months since the Center adopted FreeRice as one of its official projects. The Center has provided Mr. Breen with servers to host the site (previously he had been supporting the site solely on his own servers, using his own funding) with the hopes that usage of the site would continue to grow at an exponential pace. Further, housed on the campus of Harvard University, the Berkman Center has access to a wide array of educators from a broad range of disciplines. As the site continues to expand, it will be imperative to maintain the educational quality of information disseminated, while keeping the content both intellectually stimulating and expansive, including many different fields. Thus, access to educators and researchers who have developed intellectually diverse curriculums will be invaluable. The Berkman Center has the capability to provide these resources. WHO WILL LEAD THE PROJECT? IDENTIFY KEY PERSONNEL AND ATTACH RESUMES. John Breen, the founder of FreeRice, will lead the project as Chairman of the Board. Breen has previously run the philanthropic sites thehungersite.com, therainforestsite.com, and poverty.com; he has single-handedly run the FreeRice site for nearly its entire existence. Board members will also include Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson and his wife Fern Nesson. Professor Nesson is deeply involved in issues of free, open education; he will be teaching a seminar in Spring 2009 centered on FreeRice and online education and philanthropy. The chief information officer of FreeRice is Lukas Sullivan, a [systems engineer for Brandeis University]. The project will also be assisted by a team of volunteers from Harvard Law School. [We need to attach resumes.]
WHAT DO YOU INTEND TO DEMONSTRATE OR PROVE? WHAT MEANS WILL YOU USE? IF THE PROJECT IS ALREADY UNDER WAY, WHAT HAVE YOU ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR?
The success of FreeRice will demonstrate the power of the internet as a medium for the development of innovative educational tools and the ability to engage the internet community with a philanthropic purpose.
FreeRice aims to reach a worldwide audience with a comprehensive free educational curriculum. In its first year of operation, the site has attracted a large community of participants in several countries around the world. Over 50 billion grains of rice have already been donated to the UN World Food Programme.
FreeRice needs funding to develop a novel system of content submission and review, so that the site's content can grow organically. Teachers, parents, and students are eager to contribute learning modules to the site, but there is currently no system by which they can do so. Funding from Carnegie would allow the development of a content review system managed by established educators and professionals. Ideally, educational content will be developed and submitted by the FreeRice community, which will allow the expansion of the site at minimal cost. A stringent quality review system will be necessary to maintain the website's reputation and to keep content appropriate for children.
Funding for marketing will also allow FreeRice to become more established as a learning tool. We plan to solicit the feedback of teachers in the continued development of the site which will help FreeRice to gain respect among educators. The continued publicity of the website will help it become a recognized and respected medium for the sharing of educational material. The site will ultimately be self-sustaining, fueled by content contributions from the community and funded by advertising revenues. FreeRice's success will be easily measurable by monitoring the number of users both inside and outside of the classroom, the number of submissions that are made and accepted, and the amount of rice donated.
IF YOU ARE REQUESTING FUNDING FROM CARNEGIE CORPORATION FOR A COMPONENT(S) OF A LARGER PROJECT, SPECIFY WHICH ACTIVITIES YOU ARE REQUESTING THE CORPORATION TO FUND AND HOW THEY RELATE TO THE LARGER PROJECT.
We believe that FreeRice.com is a substantial project in itself. It is not a component of a larger project.
WHAT OUTCOMES DO YOU EXPECT FOR THE PROJECT, BOTH IMMEDIATE AND LONG TERM?
In the immediate future we plan to continue to expand the content that is available on FreeRice.com. We are in the process of developing the pre-algebra curriculum as a new and separate subject available to users. We are also working on developing a curriculum that will help build English language skills for users for whom English is not their first language. We are constantly thinking of new content to add to the website, and consider the growth of the available curriculum to be an immediate and long term outcome. In the relatively immediate future, the website will also be improved by creating a way for users to create and register usernames and passwords that will allow them to log on to the site and keep track of their progress. Users will not only be permitted to see the total amount of rice that they have donated, but they will also be able to keep track of their history of performance in the different subjects. We expect this improvement to result in increased usage of the site because users will be able to get a better sense of accomplishment, and we hope that this feature will make the site more appealing to teachers and educators. In the long term, we expect teachers to use the website as an educational tool in the classroom and to encourage their students to use the site at home as well. The capability of reviewing what subjects students have worked on and their progress within those subjects will make it easier for teachers to use the site as an educational tool in this way. Schools can even encourage healthy competition among different classrooms based on usage of FreeRice.com over a predetermined period of time. The educational and philanthropic features of the site make it ideal for use in the classroom, and we expect to see increased use of the site in this way over the long term.
Another outcome that we expect for the project is the streamlining of the technical aspects its operation. We have been communicating with a technical support consultant who has made several suggestions for the improvement to the organization of the server which will help to facilitate the continued expansion of the site and will cause the website to run even faster and more smoothly than it already does. In the long term, we expect to see widespread use of the website across the entire world. There is already substantial use of the website in foreign countries such as India and China, and we expect for usage to continue to increase both domestically and abroad as more and more people find out about the website. Having a sound structural basis to support the increased global usage of the site is essential to the success of the project. The largest long term outcome that we expect for the project is a revision and perfection of the business and operating models for the site. The controlling entity of the website will be reorganized as a non-profit entity. This will likely yield some tax advantages, and will ease the process of soliciting advertisers. We expect to develop a way in which the website can be self-sustaining, both in terms of funding and in terms of content expansion. With respect to funding, a portion of the income from the sale of advertisements will be used to cover the operating expenses of the website. This will enable us to hire technical consultants to continuously improve the operation of the site and marketing experts to ensure a continued stream of advertisement sales to sponsors. For the content, we will create a sort of advisory board, perhaps teachers who volunteer their time in exchange for public recognition of their position, who will review content that is submitted by users of the website. The advisory board will make sure that the submitted content is not inappropriate, and will cause all appropriate material to be added to the site. By allowing users to submit content, the website will be able to grow very large very quickly, and users will be able to share their information and ideas with each other in an educational environment.
IF YOU HAVE REQUESTED FUNDS FROM OTHER SOURCES (OR PLAN TO), PLEASE LIST THOSE SOURCES AND NOTE THE STATUS OF YOUR REQUEST.
On October 20, 2008, we submitted an application to the Google, “Project 10 to the 100” competition, which is described as “a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Information about the competition is available at www.project10tothe100.com. The submissions will be open for review and vote by the public on January 27, 2009. After public voting has narrowed the ideas to the top twenty, an advisory board will select five final ideas to receive some portion of the money that Google has committed to implementing these projects. WHAT PLANS DO YOU HAVE TO DISSEMINATE INFORMATION TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT YOUR PROJECT? Part of FreeRice.com's success thus far stems from word-of-mouth. Students, educators and parents have eagerly spread the word about the dual benefits of FreeRice.com – education and philanthropy. However, this is just the start of FreeRice's plan in informing the nation and thereafter the world about the site. While FreeRice has enjoyed its current audience, we must take the next step to introducing the site's benefits and promoting it as a philanthropic, educational tool.
Harvard Law School’s student volunteers assist FreeRice with disseminating information and interacting with the public about the expansion of FreeRice’s curricula. Currently, the Berkman Center lists FreeRice as one of its ongoing undertakings (link site). This link exposes the site visitors to our venture. Those interested in the free flow of educational information are drawn to our project.
Student volunteers have begun interviewing parents and teachers, seeking their input on the development of FreeRice. While conducting these interviews, we are spreading the word and engaging our target audience in FreeRice's development (see [ask Isaac for link]). FreeRice will continue to use student volunteers to interact with educators and parents. The use of technology, such as video recorders and the internet, will allow us to capture the needs of our users. Student volunteers have also created a video pitch to solicit kids’ feedback and ideas (ask Isaac for the link). Content submission will give users the opportunity to display their creativity and contribute to the expansion of FreeRice. Moving forward, student volunteers will create similar clips for parents and educators. This feature will attract users who are eager to see their ideas on the net. Already we receive an abundant amount of e-mails from users who believe they can add to the site's curricula. This new feature will make the process seamless, and contributors will be able to articulate their ideas for the benefit of the entire site. In order to understand the market and create a solid business plan, FreeRice will engage educators in focus groups and workshops. These forums will allow FreeRice volunteers to interact openly with the target audience. The information gathered at these events will allow FreeRice to create a marketing plan that fits properly with the goals of our organization. Moreover, the teachers attending the workshops and focus groups will be encouraged to use FreeRice as a teaching tool. Teachers have expressed interest in utilizing FreeRice as part of their lesson plan. As educators quickly learn about the effectiveness of FreeRice, the use of the site as an educational tool will become widespread. Our goal is for all users to feed their mind, while feeding the world.
