While listening to a recording of Neil Armstrong’s haunting declaration of his “one small step,” nine-year-old Jack watched his avatar walk on the moon’s surface. After having taken the historical Apollo 11 flight from earth to moon, during which he learned about space travel, orbits and the moon, avatar Jack appeared captivated.
If he wanted to, avatar Jack could zipline through a tropical rainforest or dive the Great Barrier Reef, among other adventures available to him in Wonder Rotunda, a fictional island situated in the New York Harbor.
Wonder Rotunda was created when Eric Garfinkel watched his children participate in popular kids' Web sites and noticed a lack of educational substance.‘We need something they can use that is Internet savvy and tech savvy, but at the same time, does something that’s mind expanding,” he said. “I felt like there are parents out there like me who want their children to be exposed to technology and virtual worlds that are educational, and not subjected to ads and social networks.”
And Wonder Rotunda, an educational, interactive virtual amusement park with various exhibits to visit, was born to teach children using a technology-centric and fun approach.
Before exploring Wonder Rotunda, each child creates an avatar, or virtual representation of himself. After creating a cartoon character that resembles himself by picking eye color and hair color, a child can engage in 15 interactive, animated adventures, such as the human digestive system; marine life and coral reef conservation; African wildlife and Serengeti migration; our solar system; rainforest layers, animals and conservation; and money facts and running a business, to name a few.
By completing each of the sections, children earn souvenirs, badges and “Wonder dollars,” which are the virtual world’s currency that children use to buy food to keep their avatars healthy.
While “engaging” may be what children desire in modern entertainment, parents typically crave the educational aspect, and finding balance is key -- Wonder Rotunda attempts to reach this threshold.
Popular children’s Web sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, for example, offer little, if any, educational substance, while Wonder Rotunda is chock full of interesting information designed to educate. Avatar Jack can take a journey through the human digestive system by steering a pod into a mouth and traversing through the esophagus, stomach, small intestines, liver and gall bladder. This concept advances the idea of utilizing Web tools to capture children’s imagination while simultaneously educating them.
The child behind Avatar Jack, however, loves Club Penguin because it’s extremely interactive. “It would be better if you can actually play,” he said, “instead of listening to talking the entire time.”
Overall, Wonder Rotunda faces strong competition, as nearly every children-oriented company has an online presence, often with social networking features and games. This year, an estimated 9.7 million children and teenagers in the United States will regularly visit virtual worlds, according to eMarketer. That number is expected to increase to 15 million by 2013.
One startling difference between Wonder Rotunda and most children’s Web sites is that Wonder Rotunda is not inundated with advertisements intended to influence children toward purchasing products.
Wonder Rotunda was purposefully created this way after Garfinkel saw many children’s Web sites filled with advertisements. For instance, a popular online educational Web site for children called FunBrain feature two large banner ads for the Disney movie “Up” after it was released on DVD. It also features tie-ins and ordering information to children’s books. To bypass this model, Wonder Rotunda utilizes subscriptions to pay for itself, where users can pay monthly or yearly fees, which are $12 and $45, respectively.
Parents can benefit not only by knowing their children are learning about the world through Wonder Rotunda, but can also track the activities children are engaged in, frequency of visits and the topics the child wanted to learn more about. This feature is designed to help parents find their children’s emerging interests and passions.
“I liked the combination of information, game and storyline,” said Shannon Rosa, mother of three. “I think this balance is the right way to engage a child.”
Rosa has experienced developing software and said she was pleasantly surprised at the amount of time and work that went into Wonder Rotunda. Rosa’s daughter, 10-year-old Gisela, enjoyed the game, but also thought it could be a bit more interactive, rating it at 7.5 or 8 out of 10.
“I thought it was really fun and I knew some of the stuff,” Gisela said, “but not all of it, so it was cool.”
After creating the Wonder Rotunda Web site primarily by himself, Garfinkel is now in the process of approaching schools about using his Web site in the classroom. If Wonder Rotunda can be put on an overhead projector or used on an interactive whiteboard, entire classrooms can participate in an adventure together.
“We think it’s a great way for teachers to work through a particular lesson,” Garfinkel said. “If a teacher is teaching about rainforests, they can introduce the topic and the class can experience the Rainforest Zipline Adventure through the Web site.”
Yet for many educators 
and parents, the question isn’t if computers and Web sites should be integrated into the classroom, but how they should be used. With children today born in a world where computers are commonplace, the way they learn is thought to be vastly different than a generation ago: They are more familiar and comfortable with interactive computer mediums than ever before.
For Sarasota, Fla., School Superintendent Gary Norris, computers are an important learning tool that more schools need to integrate into curriculum. Sarasota County Schools is currently implementing its Next Generation Learning Plan to integrate computers into school curriculum and create a more active technological environment in the classroom, rather than traditional, lecture-oriented passive environments.
“It’s more about engaging the learner instead of passive learning,” Norris said. “We’re trying to learn technologically because students are tech savvy and so far above where most teachers are. We’re trying to bring teachers to a similar level.”
Some classrooms have even incorporated video games into their curriculum. Making History, a historically accurate World War II video game where students assume leadership of countries during the war, has been used at numerous colleges and high schools.
Other Web sites offer “virtual field trips,” where students can experience and learn about a place online. At History.org, the Colonial Williamsburg Web site, schools can enroll for virtual field trips that explore historically important events complete with actors portraying famous figures. The National Park Service also offers virtual field trips where park rangers explore and explain national monuments and parks.
Wonder Rotunda may be a good fit in a classroom environment because it allows children to see examples of different environments and learn about them, rather than passively learning from a textbook or teacher. The site can also take students where virtual field trips can’t, such as the moon and human digestive system.
Each Wonder Rotunda adventure is formatted more like an animated lecture that is full of information, but mostly, the child watches — a format that may work well in a classroom environment where children are captive observers.
“The situational learning and motivation coupled with gaming and incentives,” Garfinkel said, “are what we hope is the perfect package.”
