Know Your World

Introduction The developers of Know Your World (KYW) are proud to submit their entry for the Apps for Development Contest. Anyone with an Internet connection can access Know Your World at www.quiz2015.com. Inspired by the Apps for Development challenge, four friends, Antonio, Bruno, Carolyn and Pablo came together to create Know Your World in order to raise awareness and contribute towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Know Your World is a fun (and addictive!) quiz. Players gain points for answering questions correctly and compete against their friends for top rank - both locally and globally. Fueled by World Bank Data on the MDGs, players are challenged by a trove of over 17,000 questions. Pulled randomly and presented in rapid sequence, the questions encourage players to learn about the MDGs, measurement indicators, and individual country progress towards meeting the 8 Development Goals. Why make a game? The MDGs are serious. They're also important. They are not fun (kind of like vitamins or flossing your teeth). When you have time to rest, you don't go straight to the most recent MDG progress indicator spreadsheet. Instead you play games, check up on friends in Facebook, or read something a little less dense. Know Your World takes a serious subject and makes it accessible. It infuses competition, friends, and smarts to hook people into learning. Like the Flintstones did for vitamins, Know Your World does for the MDGs. Try it once and see: www.quiz2015.com. Overview

Know Your World is an interactive game focused on the MDGs and available via Internet-enabled devices including mobile phones, tablets and desktops.
The objective of Know Your World is to provide anyone with access to the Internet and curiosity about the MDGs a fun and engaging way to learn about the MDGs. KYW also gives players 3 easy ways to help achieve the MDGs.
Know Your World is targeted towards students, academics, professionals, and really anyone with a desire to learn - and play!
Know Your World consists of more than 17,000 questions based on the World Bank MDG Dataset. Questions are ranked Easy, Medium or Hard. A player is awarded points for each correct answer. (S)he loses points for incorrect answers. Players can also skip a question without penalty. Many of the questions were manually prepared and include a few surprises.
Players are encouraged to research the correct answer through links to relevant resources including The World Bank Resources Page and the UNDP.
Login is through Facebook Connect which allows KYW to utilize Facebook Profiles for user location, photo, and global score ranking/competition.
It uses jQuery and jQuery Mobile to seamlessly support touch screen devices like Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch).
Fully compatible with modern desktop browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, or Google Chrome.
Engineered by the team from scratch using Open Source technologies and web standards. The code is ready to be open-sourced! Detailed Description Players start by logging into the Know Your World with their Facebook account. This allows KYW to capture a player’s score and general location. Once logged into KYW, players are brought straight into the quiz and can start answering questions. Players receive questions at random. Questions consist of MDG data including country progress, statistics and rankings, MDG content questions, and some fun “gee whiz” questions to keep the game interesting. A player can either answer a question or skip it. If the player skips a question, (s)he is not penalized and the question is returned to the pool for later reference. The Skip feature keeps the game fast and interesting. When a player answers incorrectly or skips a question (s)he is provided a list of resources via a dropdown menu so that (s)he can brush up on unknown topics. If the player answers the question correctly, (s)he is rewarded with 10, 20 or 30 points depending on the difficulty of the question. If a player answers a question incorrectly, his/her score is reduced by 5, 10, or 15 points based on the level of difficulty of the question. Players have four views – Home, Play, Profile, and About. Home is where you start and end. It's the first page a player gets when they access Know Your World by typing www.quiz2015.com in their web browser. A player logs in via Facebook connect. From here a player can "Like" Know Your World. This is also where a player logs out. The Play view is where the action happens. This page consists of the quiz questions, possible answers, Answer / Skip buttons, and hints (available via the dropdown at the top of the page). The Profile view tells you how you're doing compared to your friends. This page lists your total points, Global and Local Rankings. Local rankings are based on your location as listed in Facebook. The About page tells everything about Know Your World. Here users can also find 3 simple ways to Improve Your World – not just know it. Future Plans Version 2 is already in the works and will be released in Summer 2011. Planned features include:
A widget will also allow Know Your World to be embedded on any website.
An "INVITE" button will allow players to easily invite their Facebook friends. A player will be awarded points on a sliding scale for each friend that joins, with more points awarded for getting more popular friends to join. For example, a friend of yours with 500 Facebook friends would net you 50 points. The objective of this is, of course, to get more people playing KYW.
Players can develop and submit questions.
Players can directly challenge others to a Know Your World Duel! Bob Z could challenge his friend Ban Ki to answer a sticky question by sending it via a "DUEL" button. If Ban Ki answers correctly, he will be awarded the appropriate point total and Bob Z loses that amount. This feature is intended to further encourage individual research and learning. It's also fun!
In this version, Facebook is used to help the user connect to Know Your World. Version 2 will be expanded to allow users tologin via Google, Twitter, and OpenID. About Us Know Your World was developed by Antonio Zugaldia, Bruno Sánchez-Andrade Nuño, Carolyn McCoy, and Pablo Vega, polished by the feedback from numerous friends who we cannot thank enough. For more information, ideas, or to report a bug, please contact us. Sole Ownership Declaration This program is original software solely owned by the entrants mentioned above.