Business Awards - Peoples Choice Award 2008 for Technology

This year’s lucky winner of the People’s Choice Award 2008 for Technology is Wild Knowledge who have a great web based solution for information gathering relating to your local area with an educational agenda using today’s technology.

Local school children can use the mobile phones to gather information and then load this to web space where it can be stored and shared with others. Photos, video, drawings, text and more stored online... excellent initiative.

In their own words:

WildKnowledge are passionate advocates of mobile learning, being amongst one of the first organisations to realise the potential of combining information and location.

WildKnowledge started life in 2004 as a research project (WildKey) between Oxford Brookes University and software company Adit Limited. The project examined whether devices fitted with GPS and interactive keys would provide a more engaging way of identifying and recording wildlife. After trialling the software with over 1000 users, huge increases in ability and motivation were achieved with teacher and student alike (report downloadable here).

Emboldened by these results, WildKey ‘spun out’ from Oxford Brookes in late 2006. Development with Adit Limited, has since continued apace with 3 new applications (Map, Form, Image) being launched. All our applications seek to use the full functionality of today’s devices (GPS, text, camera, audio, video and internet), to deliver ‘on-location’ understanding and to capture data at the point of inspiration.

In June 2008 WildKey evolved into WildKnowledge, representing:
Wild: a lack of restraint or control;
Knowledge: expertise acquired through experience or education

Rather than knowledge being confined to experts, our mobile applications seek to break down information barriers and help the ‘non-expert’ harness and create knowledge about an object, activity or location.