Wonder Rotunda fine for mini explorers

The 1965 World's Fair meets the Internet at one of the newest interactive learning sites on the Web. Wonder Rotunda (www.wonderrotunda.com) is the brainchild of Eric Garfinkle, who said he grew up a bus ride from the fair and went to it two or three dozen times with his buddies.

Garfinkle, along with his wife and four children, spent the last two years developing the site, which is modeled after a world's fair experience. The site is designed to be a place for discovery and inspiration for children ages 7 to 12.

"My biggest challenge as a dad," Garfinkle said, "was to find for my kids whatever was special for them. To find whatever gifts they had and to find their own personal interests and sparks."

Garfinkle said he got the idea for the Web site after a travel experience with his family.

"We were at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and I thought how incredibly lucky I was to be able to take my kids there," he said. "I wanted other kids to be able to experience it, too, so we set out to simulate the experience the best we could. The tour guide, the language, the banter was all taken from our personal encounters with some of those salty people that took us places."

Garfinkle said the hardest part of developing the site was writing the scripts to accompany each of the adventures. Wonder Rotunda visitors first create avatars, or likenesses of their personae, and can also choose to create companions. These can be either adults or children, so visitors can share their experience with a buddy at the keyboard.

In addition to the Great Barrier Reef, current adventures include the Apollo 11 space mission, a hot-air balloon trip over the Serengeti, a zip-line ride through a rainforest and many others.

Visitors earn "wonder dollars" as they complete adventures. Children can spend their currency in a variety of ways, including buying a blimp floating above the park carrying customized messages. Each adventure takes 15 to 25 minutes to complete, including a quiz at the end.

Parents can log in to see what areas of the virtual fair their children are spending time at and their answers to the questions.

"We don't do any analysis," Garfinkle said. "The parents can figure it out."

The site carries no advertising and has no elements of social networking like chat or friend lists. Prices start at $45 for an annual pass for one registered visitor, with discounts for multiples and renewals.

"I sat down with moms and had them tell me what they though was a fair price. We didn't want to make a system with monthly billing," he said. "We looked at it and equated it with buying a video game or piece of educational software or three or four good books for a child. We wanted to make it accessible for most families."

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