Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

With the mini-map I can always monitor how many visitors are on the island and where they are gathering. One day I wad surprised to see a red dot behind the volcano. This is unarguably the least developed part of the island, a thin strip of water bound by the towering walls of the volcano on one side and the invisible sea wall on the other. If GK Island was a school, this is where students would smoke between classes.

And in fact, that's precisely what I found, Fox hiding out to steal a drag. I asked him why he was hiding out. He explained he wasn't sure if it was legit, if a Linden would bust him. But why smoke at all? He has smoked for years, it turns out, but quit three months earlier. The only place he still smokes is in TSL.

Once essays began to come in, we realized we could take advantage of our promise of $10US/$2,500L for each valid entry to further promote the contest. Why wait until the end of the contest to pay the stipends, and why not make the payment public?

After the receipt of two or three essays, we would contact the writers and announce a stipend ceremony. We began with a bunch of balloons from Starax' Magic Wand. Then, each writer would be given the opportunity to rez any two items from the wand they wanted. I provided them with the lists and they would IM me their options. Those in attendance simply got to join in the fun.

Spiderman. Tornado. Car. Bubblegum. Once all items were rezzed, the stipend would be distributed - a person to person exchange - which was publicly acknowledged through the Magic Wand rezzing a briefcase that, after falling from the sky, burst forth in an explosion of cash.

To round out this third volume of the Holy Meatballs of Divine Spongiform, I need to turn attention to items pertaining to the book itself.

When we finished populating GK Island with the essay contest, then items about Global Kids (like promoting our March youth conference), I established an atoll to house the Holy Meatball builds.

Within a few days I found all of the books returned to my inventory and the following note from a Linden:

Linden: hi global, I have returned you book object because of this line; “However, I had a surprise when I flew around looking for neighbors to show my new land. The first couple I found was having sex. The second was in the midst of a domination scene." We adhere to the pg standard pretty firmly on SL, and adult presence here, we make every effort to avoid any gray areas. Feel free to IM me or if you have any concerns. Thanks.

I wrote back the following:

So which line needs to be removed before I can return it? Just "The second was in the midst of a domination scene." or the one before as well? I understand your position.

It was finally resolved, the books returned, and I received this IM from the always generous and thoughtful Blue:

Blue Linden: I told the liaisons that we don't need to police REFERENCES to sex.....heheh. teens are well aware of its existence. many teens were originally on Main Grid and had asked to be moved to Teen Grid because of perverted adults having sex everywhere lol

Once in place, teens began to read about why GK Island existed and what it took to get there. Some teens, inspired by using the tools in SL to reflect on their experience, expressed interest to me in jointly creating their own version.

To round out this volume I'll reprint with their permission, the early attempts of Crimson Red and Nik387 Doesburg.

Posted by joyce at 7:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Barry at 9:34 AM | Permalink

Once the island was up and running, we were ready to get busy. The island was designed to take teens through the experience on their own. But now we were ready to make our active presence known, as adults with something to offer. It was time to start figuring out how to translate Global Kids experiential, interactive workshops into Second Life.

We decided to start small by putting out an IM call to the Global Kids group inviting anyone interested to come by for some serious play. We chose to start with a simple icebreaker, a Human Scavenger Hunt. We planned to create some general guidelines, give each teen a notecard with questions like, "Find someone who has built something in SL," set them lose, then bring them together to share.

In person we can do this in about 20-25 minutes. We could barely complete it in 1.5 hours. Running it all in text simply took much longer. In person there are all sorts of ways to establish your authority, but those failed us in SL due to the fact that the focus of ones attention is always hidden. Sure, their avatar's head is facing you, but they can focus their visual attention anywhere, not only by looking elsewhere on the screen but by literally moving their disembodied visual focus anywhere they chose, from zooming in on my knee to following a visitor around the island . And even if I knew their human eyes were looking at my avatar, how do I know they are reading what I am saying. The elements that combine to make up my presence in SL become fragmented and diffused, blending into the rush of activity. How to stand out and establish authority in a positive way (as opposed to negatively banning people)? We decided in the future to figure out how to do streaming audio. This would give our voice, as facilitators, increased authority.

For today’s workshop we tried a new ice-breaker. In SL you can distribute notecards so we created one called “Human Scavenger Hunt” with questions like, “Find someone who has felt strongly about an issue.” When we announced it, Veroo Epsilon joked, “Human Scavenger Hunt? What if we aren’t human?” While most TSL avatars are humanoid, many are animals (“furries”), monsters or aliens. In fact, when the notecards were returned, at least one was renamed “Avatar Scavenger Hunt”. Why do they choose to look as they do and what does it mean?

The teens often note with amazement that my avatar looks just like me (albeit with more hair). They don’t understand why I would make such a choice. I soon learned they built a place to share their real-world photos. They call it the Wall of Shame.

There are over 120 photos up at the time of this writing and more than a dozen are added each week. Its name says one thing; the fact it exists says another. There is both the self-loathing and the desire to share it. Now add to that the relationship between this projection of self and their TSL projection, their avatar, which is usually designed to look as little like themselves as possible. Yet while they may pretend to only occupy one of these identities in TSL, clearly all two are visible and create a complex relationship.

The learning theorist James Paul Gee writes that, “Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has ... ample opportunities to mediate on the relationship between new identities and old ones.” The Wall of Shame then can be seen as a shared mediation of their relationships with their real world identities. “There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.” Learning to bridge various identities in the real world is crucial to developing the identity of an active, critical learner who will be motivated to take on the identity of both one who learns and one who is knowledgeable about some specific field of knowledge. Gee’s argument is that virtual worlds like TSL offer teens an important environment to safely experiment with identity, whether through furries or the Wall of Shame, and make such explorations explicit.

Teens spend a considerable amount of time in TSL shaping their projective identity through various avatars and relating them with their real-world identities. In fact, one could argue that this is all they do in TSL; everything else is just a means towards that end. This leads me to wonder: what role can GK play to develop a meta-awareness amongst teens like Veroo Epsilon of this identity-play and an understanding of how it can shape them into more active, critical learners?

To take advantage of the strange physics of SL, I thought it would be fun to hold our first workshop on a platform high in the sky and keep it small to keep us closer together. Big mistake.

Immediately the teens complained that there wasn't enough room. Someone would accidentally bump another who would fall off the platform and plummet to the ground. You can't really die in SL, but I had placed the platform so high it was hard to return.

Before long, teens began adding their own platforms to our own. I immediately deleted them, as an affront to my initial design. But I was wrong, and they were right, and we ended up inside this excellent blue and red dome that held us all in. I learned quickly: when the teens see a problem they feel empowered to fix it. Being in SL in and of itself encourages the teens to view themselves as leaders.

All Global Kids workshops have guidelines, developed over the years with out Global Kids leaders.
1. Participation: You get out what you put into it. Definitely true in TSL
2. Safe Space: Treat each other with respect even when you disagree. More true in TSL than offline, as the ramifications for physical violence are less.
3. One Mic: One person speaks at a time. We are still figuring out what this means in TSL.

It was clear right away we needed some TSL-specific guidelines and we asked the participants to help us figure out what they should be. In the end, we modified Safe Space to also mean:

“Safe Space also means that everyone here should be safe from annoying or distracting behavior. NO PVP, NO BOUNCING, NO GESTURE SPAMMING -- NO PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES AGAINST ANYONE ELSE.”

By the second workshop we had many changes to implement.

We grounded ourselves, designating a plot for our use. This allowed us to control who was there. Otherwise we would become a public spectacle, attracting tourists and hecklers alike. This also allowed us to selectively allow the teens to build. Finally, the selective nature of the event - anyone could participate but once begun we refused to let anyone in - emphasized the importance of being on time and created a sense a consequences in a space where there tends to be little.

Instead of rehashing the guidelines in a group IM, we wrote them up in a notecard dispenser to review when we'd begin.

Instead of using the public chat we announced that all GK related conversations would occur in the group IM. They could continue to say anything they wanted in the public chat, giving the teens a backchannel to comment on what we are doing, a space to separate out non-related issues, and prevent those not involved from heckling the main conversation.

In addition, we announced that facilitators would not be reading the chat, which is crucial. In this case their reading attention tended to follow our own. In other words, our listening powers trumped our speaking powers. Finally, directing teens to ask procedural questions or comments to our personal IMs (e.g. I want to speak next. How much longer will this go for?) allowed us to keep the group conversation more focused, organize our own reading needs in a calmer fashion, and ensured that important questions and comments would not be lost in the shuffle.

All of these changes were a significant step forward that allowed us to start getting a handle on the basics of SL group management.

These next series of workshops focused on Human Barometers based on material developed to support teachers to prepare their students for the Digital Media Essay Contest. Our goal was to get them thinking, interested, then informed about the contest.

In person, Human Barometers are a device to encourage discussion of controversial issues by forcing participants to take a stand. On one wall we hang a sign that reads, AGREE, across from a sign that reads, DISAGREE, with a sign between that reads, UNSURE.

We read a statement, participants literally take a stand, positions are defended and, occasionally, sides are switched as minds are changed.

But in Second Life, who needs walls!

We made slightly tilted platforms, branded with Global Kids' logo, to represent the various positions.

First, all would organize on the neutral platform.

Next, we make a statement, as we did here: "Race does not matter online."

Teens flew to the platform of their choice and then, one platform at time, defended their positions.

We posed other statements for debate as well:

It’s safe to share information online

Here is a photo taken by a participant, Jackson Widget, about a question regarding learning from Second Life.

Afterwards, we regrouped, discussed how the workshop went, got advice for future workshops, and then promoted the essay contest.

Hecklers still tried to intervene (one such guy spent the better part of an hour crashing various vehicles, a taxi, a police car and airplane into the invisible barrier that kept him out.)

The overall results? It worked. The dialogue flowed and stayed focused. The issues got deep. And voices were heard. It felt quite promising. we might actually pull this off after all.

Posted by joyce at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Finally, just a few weeks off schedule, we opened Global Kids Island. It has never closed since. And as Blue had predicted, the teens poured in. Within the first four weeks, a thousand teens visited, some for just a few moments and some who made it their new home.

I have not yet described how the essay contest worked in the lake and volcano region, in large part because, until it was done, I had no idea what it would be like. As I mentioned earlier, with no time to storyboard, I simply communicated my intentions and the Magician's interpreted, adapted, and built.

Now that it was done, please allow me to first describe the idealized step-by-step experience we intended the average teen to take and then express the grave concerns I had about it ever working.

1. Teen arrives on GK Island, receiving a notecard of welcome, and a translator ring that when worn decodes the gibberish spoken by the talking rock, talking tree and talking bat.
2. Teen begins to explore and learns they can not fly.
3. If they leave the lake region, and fly back in, they will discover the volcano and that they are denied access.
4. The talking rock entices the teen to seek the Earth Throne.
5. Wandering around wind-blown trees and a giant lake, the teen discovers a giant lakeside rock chair.
6. Upon sitting on the earth throne, a giant spinning globe rises out of the lake. One of thirteen questions is posed about global digital media.
7. With the proper answer, a ruby necklace is offered along with temporary access to the volcano.
8. In searching for the volcano, a talking tree helps to show the way.
9. Leaving the lakes region for the volcano region, the power of flight returns. The teen flies high above the volcano then drops down through the boiling lava into a hidden cave.
10. The cave, filled with crystals, bats, stalagmites and stalactites, asks to be explored. One bat asks to be "petted" on the head. When the right bat is selected, the teen receives a Global Kids t-shirt, a notecard with instructions for entering the essay contest, and encouragement to click on a crystal.
11. When the correct crystal is selected, the teen receives a giant virtual envelop, pre-addressed to Global Kids, with instructions that detail how to write an essay and put it in the envelope.
12. Once the essay is in the envelope, the teen clicks on the envelope. with a burst of light, the envelope disappears, the teen receives an iguana containing a notecard about how they are endangered, and Barry Gkid receives the essay.

Phew!!!

I was very concerned when I first experienced the twelve lengthy and complex steps I just described. Did flying really need to be turned off? Did access to the volcano need to be so strict? Couldn't the talking objects give more explicit instructions?

Essentially, I was afraid it was all too much. Now that we had built it, I felt a pull to make the process as dumbed down and short as possible. But the Magicians were clear. Teens love to explore. Mystery creates interest. Appropriate challenges engage. We don't need to explain the rules of the experience, or tell them what they will find; modern games teach them that part of the fun comes from figuring out the rules on their own. And all good games attract a community, which becomes a shared repository of knowledge and experience; the first visitors will be the most adventurous and leave information clearing the way for those who follow.

I learned many lessons from the Magicians and their design, most importantly: complexity stimulates engagement; games are not played in isolation and, most importantly, never underestimate youth.

Teens Mark World

While the Magicians were correct, and the teens tore through the lake and volcano region, we were not prepared for the intensity with which the teens tried to mark the territory as their own.

First, let me explain the concept of building. Building is the term used in SL to describe the creation of an object. The object can be as simple as a flat billboard or as complex as a flying car or fighting robot. The owner of a land decides who can build on it. An owner can leave build on in one region, say the Volcano region, but off in another, say the Lake region. As few teens actually own land in SL, they are desperate to build and express their ideas. Public areas, called sandboxes, allow anyone to build and, every few hours, all objects there are deleted.

By mistake, GK Island became one giant sandbox. The build had been left on. The result? By the end of the first day, it was littered with tiny boxes, hovercrafts embedded in the side of the volcano, and more. Each item, one at a time, had to be deleted, one tedious build at a time.

Some builds sort of fit into the island.

Here is the talking tree, set on fire. Is this destructive vandalism (the fire is like Moses’ burning bush, eternal but destroying nothing), a respectful contribution, or a creative critique of the island (the tree is a few feet from other trees aflame at the bottom of a lava flow)?

Andrew became the model par excellence of a teen building items on GK Island not for their own ego, or to be difficult and attract attention (like building a platform that blocked entry into the hidden cave, or turned it into a three story suburban house), but to contribute what he could to what the island currently offered.

Here is Andrew building a box to count the characters of any submitted notecard. This would be a useful tool to help teens meet the length requirement of the essay contest.

These were some of my favorite and least expected teen builds: game cheats.

These 3D arrows pointed to various objects to touch in order to advance towards the end of the experience we had created. I had imagined teens might post advice or shortcuts on message boards. I had never imagined they would, or even could, stay within the game's medium to add meta-commentary to the island. These Click Here arrows, floating in the sky, were often paired with floating text placed at strategic locations, to direct teens to the next arrow.

Game players often write walk-through for games. In this case, they created a walk through within the game itself, interwoven as it were with the very experience to which it referred.

What do teens learn who created these arrows, or the teens that follow them? Do they learn to hold in their mind and maintain a critical distinction between the world as it is and its meta commentary? And if so, does that better prepare them to create critical distance from and analysis of their lives offline? Does it further prepare them for the digital world they are inheriting?

I always waited a few hours before deleting these builds, and always with a smile.

Most builds, however, had nothing to do with the island. GK Island, for these teens, was no more than free space.

Within a few hours two apartment complexes went up, a gothic church with a blood filled fountain, and a water park. And they were beautifully designed. It killed me to "return" them to their owners, to reject their contributions, but we had to set the right tone. The least I could do was give them an hour warning. Then I turned off build for most of the island to anyone outside the officially designated island build group.

We wanted to welcome their creativity in the service of GK Island and their initiative. It was more than we had anticipated, faster than we had expected, and we were unprepared and were caught off guard. The island had only been open for a few days! We knew once the contest was over we would have to address this in a more formal manner. But until then we needed a quick solution: we created a small area designated as the official sandbox. Build a robot. Build a house. Build whatever you want. But every few hours everything disappears.

Posted by joyce at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the afterglow of the launch party, it was time to get back to work. Global Kids was launching the essay contest in two days and we needed Global kids Island to be in place.

We were ready to move the island from the main to the teen grid. To do this, we need help from the Lindens, most often from Blue Linden, the head of the teen grid.

Moving territory in SL isn't like moving a web site from one server to another. For one thing, the move would forever alter who could use it. It was not like moving across a city. It was more like crossing the Iron Curtain or, shall I say, Linden Curtain. This age-defined barrier lets 13-17 year olds into one side and those 18 and older into the other.

So once the move was made no one from the main grid could EVER visit the island and, for the first time, teens could take it over. GK Island would be the first public adult-owned space in the teen grid.

Two Blues are better than one! Blue made his own teen-grid avatar, Blue Gkid, to help us test things out during the move.

Another tricky aspect of moving territory is that, while virtual, it has its own physical properties, which must be respected. Simply put, our plot of land has to be in relationship with its neighboring territories.

As a separate island, we chose not to be connected to the mainland. This gave us more control. Yet I worried how others would find us. Once it was in place it was exciting to see it on the mini-map of the teen grid. It was like Dorothy's house landed in Oz.

(note the cap on Snoopy’s head – a sure sign it is Blue Linden)

At the same time, I, an adult, needed access to GK Island, as did my colleague. To earn this access we had to submit to the same extensive background check required for Linden employees, insuring there were no convicted pedophiles in the bunch.

At the same time, we knew we would not have the same privileges in the teen grid as other residents. For one, we would not be able to leave the island, nor return to the main grid. Like Gilligan, we were trapped. For us it was a privilege to be there at all, to be able to interact with the teens, but when teens later learn of our status they always respond as if we've been punished and feel bad for us. It’s so sweet.

In addition, the official Group association above our name has to announce we are adults. No problem. Teens should know what they are dealing with. However, I forgot the official line and simply made it Certifiable Adult. I liked the pun. In addition I created a new avatar (I would need my old to interact in the main grid) with the new surname created by the students in our gaming program: Barry Gkid.

When I got moved for some reason something went wrong. I ended up in this suburban purgatory until Blue freed me. I never realized how confining and abnormal suburbia is until trapped there in the context of SL's free-flowing landscapes.

Once the island was in place, we had yet to flip the switch that would allow the island to be visible or available to the teen residents. First we wanted to make sure it worked as it had in the main grid.

Long story short, it did not. Almost everything broke. The earth globe rolled out of the lake and off to sea. Access to the volcano cave didn't work. The envelope for submitting completed essays sent them off to a black hole from which they would never return.

Long story short, for over two weeks, deep into the start of the essay contest offline, GK Island was inoperable. It was a nightmare. But every day, Linden employees led by Blue, and the Magicians led by Kim (who had their own background checks), toiled away until the problems were solved. To me, they were all heroes

Nobody had ever tried to do what we had just done, and now everyone can learn from our mistakes:

Mistake 1: GK Island, designed to live in the teen grid, was owned by an adult, Globalkids Bixby, a main grid resident. As a result, our Gkid avatars could not properly access key features for managing the island, like kicking off a disruptive resident, while the absentee land owner, locked out of the teen grid was just as powerless. In short, there was a disconnect between power access and geography created by the Linden Curtain.

Why not just have GlobalKids Bixby transfer ownership to Barry Gkid? It has something to do with "estates". GlobalKids Bixby's account is associated with the main grid estate and Barry Gkid with the teen grid estate. Since the land was designed in the main grid, the owner would have to also be from the main grid estate. Why not make Barry Gkid be a resident in the main grid estate? I would then have power over the land but be unable to communicate with the teens - while I could bring a main grid account geographically through the Linden Curtain, the communication tools would not follow. The solution: create a new main grid avatar, Staff Gkid, move him to the teen grid, and use him strictly for land management tasks.

Mistake 2: The entire island's objects, especially those designed to be given to teen grid residents, were designed and owned by main grid estate accounts. As such, a bat designed to give out a notecard, or a t-shirt, or an iguana, gave out nothing, as an adult account can not give an object to a teen account, even indirectly through a build. The Linden Curtain in action! Solution: Blue, Kim and others painstakingly sold every item to Barry Gkid, who shares the same estate type with the teens.

Trust me. None of this made sense to me at the time, but once it was over I had graduated with a degree in the backend of SL. I had also learned: only let teen grid avatars buy land in the teen grid or build objects that require any form of interaction.

We opened the island for just a few seconds, to test something, and this teen, Veritas Kennedy, teleported over, the Island’s first teen visitor. He/she teleported out almost as soon as arriving. Before long, Blue told me, bootleg Global Kids t-shirts were being passed around the teen grid, in anticipation of the opening.

Towards the end of the process, Kim and I commiserated at her home in the main grid:

• You: hi Kim
• Kim Anubis: Hi, Barry!
• You: How ya doing today?
• Kim Anubis: Well, this project's been a real adventure so far, huh?
• You: Is that an understatement. lol
• Kim Anubis: haha yeah, sure is
• You: It's been insane. If I wasn't already so bald I would have pulled all my hair out
• Kim Anubis: Yeah, that's starting to worry me a bit
• You: But Blue and his folks have been amazing
• You: now we know the two things that SHOULD have been done - the build should have happened in the teen grid and by teen avatars.
• Kim Anubis: We got to be the pioneers on this one
• You: those are the scars we get to proudly wear. :-)

Now that the ISLAND was functioning properly, we still needed to test out if the EXPERIENCE was working. Would teens know what to do once they got there? Could they figure it out? And what role could me and my colleagues play to assist them?

Every few days we opened the island for a few hours to get out the bugs. A Linden would make a grid-wide announcement and the teens would pour in like a pile of rice, one atop another. They would eagerly explore the island and we would watch, insuring that everything worked.

While I was delighted to see our design work properly, we ran into one unexpected glitch: the Linden Curtain was preventing me from interacting with the teens. No IM. No exchanging of objects. No sharing of cards. And to make matters worse, there was no message notifying the initiator that there was a problem. Every IM, object exchange, and card offered to me was met by an indifferent silence, as I never knew it had occurred. What would they think of me?!!

At the same time, all I could use to follow the conversation was the public chat. With twenty or more teens rapidly conversing, the dialogue flew past quicker than I could follow. Before long the entire graphically rich, embodied 3D environment was subsumed by a traditional scrolling chat window, which I frantically tried to read, reply to questions, then scroll back to see what I missed. It was a Sisyphean task.

Between the rudeness of being socially isolated and the exhaustion of being relegated to disembodied group chat, I left the first test distraught. I was upset by the experience, and concerned that without more access this entire SL experiment would be a failure, not just for the essay contest but for any other use by educators.

I wrote up an extensive email explaining the situation to Blue, making my case for the communication features. To be honest, I had little hope. I understood the Linden Curtain and did not expect them to change the code just for us. But lo and behold, it had all been a mistake. We were supposed to have those features in the first place! Blue worked his magic (by changing our Gkid account’s estate setting, I believe) and everything was back to normal. Now I could IM, trade objects and exchange cards with teens. More importantly, I could join the social network and take on a social role, which, in a virtual world, is the only way to be real.

I will never forget the lessons I learned that afternoon, about how essential those tools are for communicating in a virtual world, managing those relationships, and joining the public sphere. Without the ability to isolate and focus communication streams down to a 1-to-1 level, or at least amongst a smaller group, the ordered world is experienced as mere chaos.

The weekend before we officially opened the island 24/7, any concerns I had about teens visiting the island were swept away. Blue had promised me that as soon as the island appeared, the teens would come running. A grid-wide announcement would be announced and promoted in a message received when teens log in. Still, I was not convinced.

During the test runs, we made available the new group, Global Kids, for any teen to join. This would allow us to communicate with those most interested in the island. Just as I could send a single IM to a resident, I could choose to IM the GK group - any resident of the group logged in would get the IM, creating a group-only chat.

Well, that weekend I logged in to check something on the island. It was still closed. But immediately an IM came in. Then another in response. I was confused because it appeared I was arriving mid-conversation. And the topic: when would GK Island open back up. I had forgotten than ANY member of the group could initiate a thread, not just me. I had never imagined anyone would want to. So while I was trapped on GK Island and they were locked out, we could still communicate. And maybe it was a coincidence that I had logged in when I did, but to be listening in on teens talking about ME and MY WORK! well, I knew the buzz had begun and we had reached them.

I asked them how they would describe GK Island. One teen said: Take quizzes, win prizes and have fun. We immediately made it the tag line for the island.

Posted by joyce at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kim and I came up with the plans for the party. During the SuperBowl, of all times, we would open the island to any and all visitors. We would lead people on guided tours of the essay contest and show off the island.

While the Magicians shared the plans with their contacts, and made a posting in the events section of the official SL forums, I worked on adding other material to the island about Global Kids, outside the contest/volcano region. I made a giant book about Newz Crew, our youth-led online dialogue in conjunction with the NewsHour on PBS. I prepared the first Holy Meatballs.

I needed help, however, with X-pressions, out photo program. I didn't have the time, nor the ability, to prepare the students’ work properly. So I returned to my social network made the previous month and checked in with those who had offered to help. Rhiannon Chatnoir, whom I had met ice fishing, was delighted. She said she would be delighted to put something together.

I asked for something that was only possible in SL. I encouraged her to think outside the box. "I can see some exploratory experimental garden that when you click on plants photos pop up. I can see needing to click on something to lie down and the images get projected on clouds that float by." I left the rest to her.

As always, I was amazed by her generosity. Not only was she donating her time, but the work would go to the teen grid, where she would never see it again. In addition, she would make a giant book of the photos, so teens could take with their own copy.

I visited her late one linden night as she was preparing the book. That's when I met Armath, the boy napping in the photo. Armath was the first person to "graduate" from the teen grid. When he turned 18 the Lindens threw him a big party INSIDE a cake then transported him, with all of his inventory, to the main grid, with no option to return.

Rhiannon introduced him as "Armath, the infamous lost boy of the teen grid." We had a lot to talk about, as we shared things in common. We are both grid bridgers. He went from the teen to the main grid, while I was set to tread the same path in reverse.

Armath brainstormed ideas about how he could help with the party and landed on the role of DJ. It turns out he had the knowledge and equipment to pipe a live music feed into the island and include his voice as well. After changing a setting to associate the land with the feed, anyone visiting would be able to listen to any song he played and hear his voice between them.

More importantly, it meant guests would all hear the same sounds, creating a shared aural space to occupy, further reinforcing the feel of a party. Armath said he would provide a space to dance as well. Why people would make their avatars dance, I didn't understand, but at this point I was accepting all offers.

Sunday arrived and the party was a big success. For over four hours, with Armath DJing, Kim giving tours of the volcano region, and Rhiannon completing the X-pressions build, over 80 people visited during the brief window the island was open.

I gave tours as well, loading people up in innertubes while I, paddling backwards, narrated our way around the island. The tubes were branded Global Kids, a sort-of completion present from the Magicians after they read the first Holy Meatballs and saw how much I loved them. I also took people around on a sail boat.

Rhiannon, having finished the photo build, proudly shows of all she collected: the GK T-shirt, the translation ring, the iguana, and the ruby amulet.

All sorts of folks came. A reporter from Wired. A MacArthur Foundation program officer. Even Kim's mom.

And after touring the volcano region, exploring the island, and marveling at Rhiannon's build (each student had their own giant flower pot, each leaf a photo), there was nothing left to do but dance.

Maybe someday I will understand why, but as soon as we started dancing I couldn't stop. It was infectiously fun. It was certainly enhanced by the dance floor with its changing colors and the Star ax’s wand enhancements - balloons, a rainbow, a flying pig - but simply hearing the music and selecting a dance sequence for my avatar was incomprehensibly addictive. I got to pick from moves with names like Club Dance 2, The Butt Shake Dance, Celebrity Walk, and Clog Dance

And I wasn't alone. Everyone dancing was having a blast. In fact, Armath kept telling us it was the last dance... and then we'd keep on going. What DJ is going to stop the music when the people keep dancing!

Posted by joyce at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February has arrived. Within days the essay contest will launch, in both SL and in person. Teachers around the country will use Global Kids’ lesson plans and other materials to guide their students through the application process. At the same time, GK Island will do the same in the teen grid.

The island, however, is far from complete. Will it be completed in time? Will it survive the move intact from the main to the teen grid? And once it does, will anyone come?

The Magicians are working, and working hard. From their distributed locations around the globe, they toil day and night. Slowly but surely, that tiny volcano model begins to take shape and gain clarity in a fully realized form.

At first, I was confused about how to supervise a build in a virtual world. Were I contracting for a web site, the designers might send me demos, or provide a development URL. But in SL, the land is the land. It was like contracting for a house. And if I wanted to observe their work I had no choice but to visit the site.

The Magician’s can not build most of the island in some other context and then port the pieces over to combine like some jigsaw puzzle. They have to build it here, raisin all sorts of issues. For example, how does an embodied team collaborate and construct a confined space out of, and within, thin air?

One solution they used was analogous to scaffolding, something temporarily constructed for the build. But in this case, they didn't need a place to stand but a place to sit.

This is one of their platforms. It housed chairs and couches where they could meet and talk, smaller objects in development to be touched, and three pylons that rendered game-specific attributes. Best of all, like a magic carpet, they could transport it to wherever they liked.

Individual Magicians might grab me during one of my sneak peaks to show off something in development. They never wanted to bother me but I couldn’t have been more excited.

I had no idea what the final product would look like. It was like baking a cake I had never eaten. Sure, I had their tiny model with the mini volcano, flowing lava and three earth thrones. But it was so generalized, so abstracted, I had no idea what to expect. How much detail would there be? How would it all fit together? I provided the core ideas and the Magicians then developed a vision, but one to which I had no access. Until it was completed, these brief demonstrations were my only hint that we were on target. Beyond that, I was driving by trust and fear.

Kim showing me the final build of the envelope that would be used for sending in completed essays:

Alex showing me the Thinker position for taking the Earth Throne quiz:

The bats. Their eyes blink!

Working in conjunction with the Save Darfur campaign, The Magician’s donated their time to create official versions of their wristband awareness campaign, with dispenser’s like this:

Amazingly, within just a few weeks, the island was completed, and on time.

“I'm taking lots of pics,” Gus Plisskin told me, after turning on the sun and watching the first sunrise on GK Island. “I'll miss this place when it goes to the Teen Grid.”

That is Gus’ silhouette in the far distance. I had to admit I was lucky. In 48 hours, he and everyone else on the main grid would be prevented from ever seeing GK Island while I, on the other hand, would never be able to leave.

Before we moved the island to the teen grid, we wanted to open it to visitors, to show it off, for the first and last time.

It was time for a party.

A launch party.

But how do you throw a party in SL?

Posted by joyce at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)