Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

On Thursday we finished our research on child soldiers and we presented to the group according to our research questions, like how do child soldiers become soldiers? In how many countries are child soldiers involved? We also started brain storming and gathering ideas in which we would make our machinima about...like for the story, if we want it fictional, this is also the process on storyboarding, and ultimately coming to a final script. We hope on Tuesday to find a story topic in which most of us will agree to consider making our film. I am very excited and anxious to start filming in second life.

Posted by VVP Angela at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On this trip I learned about the past, like when Russians were treated badly and when people thought they was going to another country but they was being sent to die. I also learned that people's hair was shaved off to make carpets blankets. I learned that college students were burning books written by people from the past. Soliders put black bags on people head so they could get ready to die. I also learned about the "enemy of the state". I learned about kinds of ghettos. I learned a little bit about African Americans in WWII and learned what the Holocaust means (which is massive destruction). I also got to meet with D.C. kids and learn how they are involved in the museum. Some of the students give us a tour of the museum and told us what their thoughts were about it.

In conclusion, I learned that there is a lot of discrimination in the world.

Posted by p4ksyndie at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My visit to Washington, D.C.was exciting. Also when we got to the Holocaust museum we got to see what happened in the past. When we got there we met new people who liive in D.C. and we made new friends.

Posted by p4kquinny at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week we discussed the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline is about kids who when they get in trouble they get closer to prison and further away from school. Last week we talked about illegal experiments on prisoners. We played a game about this. When we rolled a dice we move up spaces on the board and get a Consent card, which will ask for you to take part in a experiment. If you it will affect your health and if you disagree you will be forced or you can go on.

Posted by p4kvladimyr at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The trip to Washington, D.C. was a lot of fun, meeting all the Washington kids.
When we went to the Holocaust Museum I felt bad when I saw how many Jews died.
One of cool thing about the trip to D.C. was the hotel - nice big rooms (but not that much to watch on tv but its all good).

Posted by p4kdavian at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thursday, we continued our research on the topics that we were assigned on Tuesday. My group, which included Ronald, Melanie, and myself, were supposed to look for where Child Soldiers are. We found.... over thirty countries, and it was not too difficult to find lists all over the Internet. Anyway, it was not hard to find the information, but after we did...that's when questions arose. The UN website and child-soldiers.org both identified Israel as a nation that had Child Soldiers--but after Idan said that it was not true...I decided to do a little research into it. Anyway, I found this on the child-soldier website: " 'I was detained on 18 March 2003... We are in a very small room with 11 people... We are allowed to use the bathroom only three times a day at specific times. Once a week we are allowed to take a 30-minute recess. The prison guards force us into shabeh position: they tie our hands up and one leg and then we have to face the wall.' 15-year-old boy arrested by Israeli forces, reporting on detention conditions in an Israeli settlement outside Ramallah, April 2003."

Apparently child-soldiers do exist in Israel/"Occupied Palestinian Territory". Anyway, apparently there is a long story behind it, and I'm not quiet sure I understand the whole thing so I will leave you to discover your own "truth" on the subject at matter. By the way...Sam us left early again. After that, we tried to brainstorm ideas for a story line based on the facts that we gathered together. My group, I thought it would be good to put in the part where a child soldier was kidnapping other children as a means to recruit new child soldiers to hit sympathy nerve in whoever is watching but I did like the other idea where the kids were sitting on the table with their family and then they were seen again as child soldiers with their military leaders. I like the idea of them holding guns at the dinner table instead of toys too, but I don't know if they should be sitting at the table with the leaders though. In some way, it makes some sense to have the military leaders sitting on a high table looking down at the kids who are on the floor eating together. But yeah, I don't know, I guess we just have to see what the majority agrees upon.

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Kids are a Gold Sponsor of the very first, 24-hour, Second Life International Best Practices in Education Conference. The conference will be held on May 25, 2007 in venues all over the Second Life, with exciting presentations, vendors and exhibitors exploring the possibilities for teaching, learning, and research in Second Life.

We will be on site and also have in-world copies of our UNICEF Summer Camp Comic Book to give away.

Details about the conference can be found here.

Make sure to look for us there!

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

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard of the terrible tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech on 4/16/07. In order to share our condolences and reflect on the incident, we have allocated land on Global Kids island for just that. The land can be found here.

Anyone who wishes to build something in memoriam or reflection of the terrible events that took place at Virginia Tech are free to do so on this land. I have created an obelisk on the land so that it is more visible to those who wish to build.

Posted by Mercury at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Flickr photos have been posted of GK'ers Tabitha Tsai and Nafiza Akter at the National Service-Learning Conference in which they were part of a Youthwork in a Digital Age Workshop.

The conference was also broadcast into Second Life. Thanks Ben and Tabitha!

View the rest of the photos here.

Posted by joyce at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just kidding.

A dutch educational guide, written by Patrick Koning, recommends Best Practices For Education in Second Life and The Global Kids Guide to Presenting in Teen Second Life.

Read his post here.

Posted by joyce at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While we look forward to Moo Money blogging here about her activities on GK Island, she has been blogging elsewhere, and others are noticing. Here is a short blog report on Moo's involvement with GK Island and highlights her recent video tour of our islands.

Read the post here.

Posted by joyce at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our neighbors in the teen grid posted a really lovely blog about our birthday.

Global Kids' project has been a driving force on the Teen Grid with non-profits and educational projects. His island was the inspiration for our project, PacRimX (even if his translator rings really did not translate).

Global Kids latest accomplishment was being the catalyst for a discussion that lead to the restructuring of the Teen Grid into zones.

This celebration is a reminder as to just how short a time we've all been doing this, and how much has been accomplished in this short period of time. June will be PacRimX's six month anniversary. I can only hope that we are only the first of many to enter this space and set up virtual learning spaces for students.

Happy Rez Day Global Kids!! We can't wait to see what you do in your second year.

Read the entry here.

Posted by joyce at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alex thanks GK and SL Insider to spreading word about the Unification Project.

Read about it here.

Posted by joyce at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday's workshop we learned more about the different aspects that contribute to the Child Soldiers in Uganda. The group I was put in worked on the International Criminal Court. We learned that they have issued warrants to arrest people who have committed those crimes but those warrants have not been put into action. We also looked at the United States' point of view and the government of Uganda's point of view. The United States, of course, did not come to a conclusion on the issue, but the government of Uganda did say that they might pardon the crime if the person gives up all the soldiers. That of course mad no sense, but I'm sure they have reasonable explanations to why they decided to do that. But we did get to look at different point of views. I did ask my AP government teacher why the US was not a part of the ICC and he said that it was because the US was a super power and did not want to be boxed into a situation they did not want to be in. But it made me wonder...if the League of Nations failed because Super Powers were not a part of it...so how successful will ICC be. Then again, the ICC is a little different from the League of Nations...so I guess we will just have to wait to find out.... ^-^

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When we created the media section, we presumed we would be listing radio, tv and magazine articles about it. But what could be better than a high school paper on technology and culture from a student in Mexico!

The paper, "El impacto de la era digital en la relación entrela tecnología y la cultura," writes,

Personalmente, uno de los proyectos que más me asombra es aquél llevado a cabo por una organización sin fines de lucro de Nueva York, Estados Unidos, llamada Global Kids. En el año que ha estado en la sección para adolescentes ha logrado dirigir un número de eventos exitosos relacionados con problemas globales y activismo juvenil.

Mariel, the TSL resident who wrote it, and amongst other things introduced Henry Jenkins to Second Life last December, translates it for me as,

Personally, one of the projects that amazes me the most is the one led by a non-profit organization based in New York, Global Kids. During the year it has been in the section for teenagers, it has managed to host a series of successful events on World issues and youth activism.

Thanks Mariel. A+ ;-)

Posted by joyce at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As we near the last week of our online dialogues, FOCUS: Teen Voices on Digital Media and Society, we want to extend a big thank you to all of Global Kids' fellow MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Grantees that sent in topics and questions to be incorporated into the dialogues.

In specific, thank you Danah Boyd, David Williamson Shafer, Joseph Kahne and the entire team at the Good Work Project at Harvard.

Areas included how teens relate (or don't) to civic and political life online, their usage of online participatory mediums like wikis, their relationship to social networking sites and ethical choices that they makes in regards to situations they encounter online.

The project is meant to support these academics, educators and practitioners that are taking a deep look at how digital media is used and how it affects the lives and learning of young people today. We've been amazed at how articulate, intelligent and varied the opinions in the teen discussions have been. To read what these teens have to say, you can check out the ongoing FOCUS dialogues.

Posted by Rafi Santo at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Starting this month, Global Kids will start to work with a handful of teen residents from Second Life on our new GK Internship Program. In the program, teens that we've often worked with in the past will be given the opportunity to develop, promote, facilitate and document their own events on Global Kids Island, in addition to helping out on larger events that we run.

Part of Global Kids' mission is to help foster leaders with critical thinking skills, and this program will aim to encourage the development of reflective teen leaders while giving back to the larger TSL community. Expect lots of different types of events, from those relating to global issues to more local teen grid issues, classes of various sorts, discussions, debates and much more. Also look for posts right here on Holy Meatballs from the interns!

Posted by Rafi Santo at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday we had to vote again on the topic we want to do for our final project because we didn’t have enough people last time. We voted on child soldiers. After that, we watched a documentary on child soldiers. On Thursday we would research more about it and proceed to filming.

Posted by VVP Miguel at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday we finally jumped all of the tech hurdles and got the McKinley students right into both Second Life and TIGed right away. The students gathered in our clubhouse so we can start from the beginning.

The process worked surprisingly well, considering it was our third meeting together. The students agreed to the Global Kids guidelines, which immediately improved the language they used with one another, we played a game, and then they began using the curriculum. It was exciting getting the program off the ground, in the sense that now it can be self-guided and we adults can play the role of facilitators in the use of the curriculum.

We established communication through a group - so they can move around but still be in contact through the group IM window - and started in the clubhouse and ended with the intention of watching the volcano erupt.

Oh, one last thing. The majority of these students are part of the U.S. Holocaust Museum's Ambassador program, in which they learn how to become guides for the exhibits. Before we watched the volcano I realized we were standing next to our virtual version, that shows photos on the side from Darfur. I asked the students if they knew what the building was. "Holocaust Museum," they said.

I thought that was cool. How many people can indentify the U.S. Holocaust Museum, let alone a 3D facsimile?

Posted by Barry at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week we did work refining our topic for our game. Earlier we had unanimous agreement to do a game about racism. But what about racism?

We spent the last few weeks prototyping games, just to learn how to prototype. The students made a game about a slave trying to escape to freedom in the north. Another group of students made a scavenger hunt about civil rights leaders.

This week we discussed the differences between institutional racism and racial prejudice, and then looked at institutional racism in a variety of settings. After we voted on what institution to focus on we found we had an even split between the health care industry and education.

To learn about the former, we listen to recent NPR radio interview with Harriet A. Washington, who published Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation On Black Americans From Colonial Times To The Present. We heard about horrific events from the times of slavery through to prisons today.

To learn about the later, we learned about something referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline, in which many youth of color are set up not to graduate but to enter the juvenile justice system.

What to do about the split? Not only did the groups prefer different subjects, but each side said they didn't like the topic selected by the other. So, how to find consensus? Without consensus, there is no buy-in.

When in doubt, turn it over to the youth. We asked them what they thought we should do. "Do both," Tashawna said. Easier said than done, we explained. Within either medical research or education we still would need to find a subtopic. To pick both would mean finding a subtopic that spanned BOTH institutions.

"Prisons," Tashawna said. "The school-to-prison pipeline and unethical medical experimentation on the prison population."

I asked one group. They enthusiastically nodded. I asked the other. They were in agreement as well.

We found consensus and everyone, enthusiastically, had buy-in.

Posted by Barry at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday we voted once again on the topic we would like to choose for our final project. The two topics were global warming and child soldiers. We compare and contrast the two topics and discussed on how they are important, we asked questions like how would each reach out to the public?, how they could be shown in second life?, we brainstormed on the pro's and con's.

We finally voted again and the majority voted for child soldiers. I am very excited about this topic. I think there could be a greater chance to get people interested in this topic and actually take action. I think it’s also a very good topic for teenagers since as a teenager myself sometimes I am not thankful for what I have, such as a home, clean clothing to wear everyday, a school, and most importantly my family.

As we watched a documentary in machinima about child soldiers, its images were sad, but it also gave you a wake up call to the things as I said before, we sometimes don’t realize what we have. Most of us by looking at movies that show poverty, mistreatment, and violence, gives us feelings of sadness, but when it comes to the real question WOULD YOU GET INVOLVED IN THIS TOPIC? And WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET OTHERS interested? Well right now we might be unsure due to the fact that we know so little about this topic...DONT WORRY...WE ARE VERY EXCITED to start our research in this topic and begin to START OUR FINAL PROJECT! Mostly because we want to reach the public to become interested in this topic and take ACTION!!

Posted by VVP Angela at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey guys, I just got on to blog to talk a little about Tuesday’s workshop. Tuesday we discussed the pros and cons about deciding either to film Global Warming or Child Soldiers. We talked about how it could be harder to make a second life machinima on Global Warming because the subject in general was too broad. Too many things to discuss in one machinima and it got kind of controversial because people can interpret the machinima in too many different ways. People would really have to think before they get the message across. Child Soldiers on the other hand was more specific in detail. Even though the fact that it’s about other countries that have this problem occurring, if we make a machinima on Child Soldiers, it may get some of us to get involved with that problem because if we can send help to other people from different countries, we can definitely do something to try to reduce the percentage of children being abducted from their homes and forced in to the military.

Children's families are often murdered in order to be able to abduct their children. In the end, the majority of the group voted for Child Soldiers. Towards the end of the session, we watched a documentary on children in Uganda living in fear everyday. The fact that they were taken from their homes…some people should really help or do something about it. I feel it’s great how they don’t lose hope in anything. They have dreams and hopes to be free and come to America to live a good life. Some of us here take advantage of that, like some people give up just because they failed in something, but we have lots more opportunities to gain another chance unlike the kids in Africa. They're trying to survive and they know that they can be taken away anytime, but that doesn’t stop them from dreaming. I hope somebody stops this one day. Anyways guys see you all on Thursday. Take care!

Posted by VVP Alex at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday we revisited the two possible topics that we could make our next final machinima project on. The two topics were Child Soldiers and Global Warming. When we went into the session we began off with trying to brainstorm the pros and cons of both the topics and then we voted on one topic that we wanted to do. We chose child soldiers as a majority. Well I kind of abstained from voting because I was not too sure about either of the topics but the majority wanted to do Child Soldiers. I think it is a great choice, and I thought it was a good topic which is why I put the topic out there in the first place. But I'm not too sure anymore. Well I thought that both of the topics were great. I don't know if anyone has ever made a machinima about either one of these, so it would be interesting to try to make a machinima out of them. Global Warming, I think it has become a huge impact on the media and it would be interesting to see us do a machinima on that; on the other hand, child soldiers…not so much media spotlighting.

I actually did not know about it until the GK program in my school introduced it a while ago (it's funny because they used the same movie that Tabitha and Sam showed in class on Tuesday~ except we got to finish the whole thing). But, I thought it was very touching to see something like that. But then I think there is a difference in the impact that a real-human-child soldier versus the impact an avatar will have. No matter what…an avatar will be somewhat generic, which will take some of that sympathy that you expect the audience to feel for the character. Yes, everyone can say, "Anything is possible". Bu anything is not always possible, if it was, the world could possibly be a "utopia" at the moment. And plus, it is easier said than done...especially since we don't have much time. We have two months to get this done, and we have not yet finished our previous project nor researched this one. So it is not much time. In addition to that...and back to the generic-ness of the avatar…an avatar is made to look somewhat mature. I do not know if making a child avatar is even possible without a special shape or skin. Also, having to change your avatar can sometimes be hectic when it comes to SL since there can be lag... and I know we thought it was a good idea to use this topic since more people can get involved...but then again the more people involved the more disorder there can be...and sometimes it is hard to direct avatars since they can only move in a certain way. Anyway, I do see many challenges to this, but that does not discourage me much because, as always, everyone pulls through at the end no matter what ^^~!

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Tuesday in the Global Kids workshop, we were deciding on a topic for a last video on a global issue. The choice was between child soldiers and global warming. We posted out the pros and cons of the two topics. At the end the entire workshop decided on choosing child soldiers. After that was set and done, we saw a documentary on kids in Uganda that are hiding from recruiters of the rebels and the armies. We saw the terrible conditions that the children went through and to me it showed the resilience of these brave kids that can go through so much hard times and still have a smile on their face.

Posted by VVP Armando at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last class we spent most of the times thinking up topics that we would all focus on for our next project/PSA. We narrowed it down to global warming, war, and child soldiers. Then we were divided into the three groups to do research on the topics. I was sent into War and we chose to focus on the idea of the aftereffects of war. We put together a lot of information of what it caused, which include economy, environment, health etc. At the end we voted for global warming, which was my choice topic. That was about all we did.

Posted by VVP Joe at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well yesterday I heard about the shooting at Virginia Tech. 33 dead including the shooter. The security waited after the first shooting, because they thought it was already contained. But they thought wrong, and it ended as a tragedy . This is the most tragic shooting event that has happened in the U.S .

Posted by VVP Ronald at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last class we had only a few people who attended but we managed to progress further by discussing and narrowing down the future topics on which we will make our longer and bigger video. After an entire session of voting talking and researching we ended up narrowing it down only to find out that we will be doing the same thing next class because we need to have everyone’s opinion on the matter.

Posted by VVP Idan at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Thursday we basically brainstormed different potential topics for our finishing film that we will be working on. So...we narrowed it down to three, which were war, global warming, and child soldiers. Unfortunately.... the group I was in got stuck with researching about war. We had a lot of trouble doing this because we thought war was too much of a broad subject/topic.

Eventually, Sam helped us think on war a little more and then we narrowed it down to researching the effects of war, but we still did not feel too strongly about the topic itself. But anyway, when it came down to voting...everyone voted on either Global Warming or Child Soldiers... but the votes were close... and almost to a tie. Although global warming did win by one extra vote... it was still pretty close, which is a bad thing. We have to do decide on something together...so it is important that most people feel comfortable with what we are doing, and I really don’t like making a big decision in a minute. But I'm glad that Sam decided that we will be going back to choosing the topic once again so we can really vote on (as a majority) one topic! Anyway~ I'm looking forward to today's Machinima session~ ^^ so I am off to it~!

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Second Life Insider covered Alex Harbinger's Unification Proposal in a recent blog post. It brought up a few possibilities on both sides of the issue. Worth reading are some of the comments posted.

Posted by joyce at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out Moo Money's first machinima video made from the teen grid as her avatar there Machinima Guru. She focuses on and gets some great footage of the Global Kids' Islands.

Check it out here.

Posted by joyce at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a thread for teen residents of Second Life to share their thoughts of how we can help provide spaces or activities for you to respond to the Virginia tech shootings. More information on the tragedy can be found here.

As there are many education institutions in Second Life, specifically ones from Virginia Tech, the SL educational community has rapidly responded with ideas, from creating memorials to addressing the issues of violence in schools.

If you are a teen resident, please use the comment space below to let us know if you'd like to see Global Kids do something on our islands in response. Some ideas are:
- Turn the island to night for the week.
- Hold a workshop or discussion about the issues of violence in society.
- Create a space for teens to leave monuments.
- Get copies of monuments from the main grid.

We are open to any and all ideas.

Posted by Barry at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

On the second podcast from the Second Life Insider, Moo Money discussed her recent arrival on GK Island, the process it took for her to get there, and (starting at 50:58) begins a fascinating half hour discussion about what adults don't know about the teen grid. One quote: "the teen grid is the third world of Second Life." Must listening!

Check out the podcast here or listen to it below.

powered by ODEO

Click here to download.

Posted by joyce at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Second Life Insider's new podcast says they are looking forward (at 15:12) to Global Kids teens from the Virtual Video Project presenting their work at this August's Second Life Community Conference. So are we!

Listen to their report on the upcoming conference here or below.

powered by ODEO

Click here to download.

Posted by joyce at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As detailed here and here, the Global Kids Estate has been redistricted this weekend as part of a teen-grid wide reorganization to group like islands with like: teen with teen, Linden with Linden, and adult with adult.

This means we can FINALLY learn what organizations own islands in the teen grid. So with a little photoshop magic, I created a map detailing all adult-owned islands in the teen grid. Keep in mind, most are closed - only for teens who work with the organization or school (Ramapo)- or seasonal (KidsConnect) or not yet opened to the public (British Council) or even abandoned (Unreal?).

And when it comes to all of those other islands, outside Global Kids, Eye4You Alliance and the PacRim Alliance, I can only ask one question. Who are you? And what are you doing/will be doing in TSL? (Okay, two questions. Sue me...)

Click to see the details.

Posted by Barry at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This was just sweet. A Global Kids Leaders, who is NOT even in one of our Second Life programs (as it conflicts with our performance program) decided to take all of the GK Staff photos from our web site and make billboard, just to practice:

Posted by Barry at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Machinima Guru aka Moo Money from the Main grid held a basic machinima class on GK Machinima Island today. I had the pleasure of sitting in and watching her teach very eager teen how to make machinima. Even though this was Moo's first time teaching machinima to teens, she did an excellent job. There were about 20 or so teens that attended, and all were giving her their full attention as she went into riveting detail about screen resolution and which programs are best to film with. Many teens have been waiting for a class like this since they first heard about or watched machinima somewhere on the web, and they definitely took a lot back with them when the event was over. The overall feedback was extremely positive, and teens want more machinima classes. Luckily, Moo will be hosting others in the future! Yay!

Machinima Guru on the stage, teaching the basic machinima class.

Posted by Mercury at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As described in a recent post, the teen grid is being reorganized. Here is email I received this morning form Blue. So exciting! I hope to show a before and after photo when it is done.

From: Blue
Subject: Island moves...

...will take place over the weekend. The map won't update right away, but your landmarks, home points and other reference points to your estates will work as always. It's to be hoped that the map will update by Monday at the latest. If not I will check with the developers to force a map update.

Your Pal,
Bloo

Posted by Barry at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday’s workshop we discussed the new topics we might be interested in to do our final project. Some of the interesting topics were child soldiers, global warming, war, drugs, violence (domestic), organ and child trafficking. We took a vote and ended with global warming as the final topic. I don’t really like the topic. I was more interested in child soldiers, because I think it would be more interesting since many people do not know about this subject, and I just thought child soldiers would be more interesting to show in machinima. Global warming is an important issue, but I personally don’t have much interest in it. .

Posted by VVP Angela at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Second Life Insider's new podcast says they are looking forward (at 15:12) to Global Kids teens from the Virtual Video Project presentingtheir work at this August's Second Life Community Conference. So are we!

Listen to their report on the upcoming conference at here.

Posted by joyce at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

a) John Swords of SecondCast and Electric Sheep wrote on his blog about the recent announcement of the teen grid redistricting. He added some very nice things about us as well:

"If you are not following what all Global Kids is up to, I strongly encourage you to add their blog to your feed reader. They are pioneers of Teen Second Life and have amazing programs for youth."

Rik also added a great comment, that is worth checking out.

b) People are talking about the teen-led Unification project as well, as in: http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/virtualworlds/?p=170

Posted by joyce at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had a LOT of technology challenges last week. Secondlife.com AND Tiged.com are BOTH blocked by the D.C. system. Ugg. Of course, teens know their way around a proxy, but it slowed things down. Also, the net connection was too slow to have all the teens on their own Skype headset, which was a bummer. But we continue to persevere.

We also finally created a few of the curriculum modules to get them up in time, but due to the slowness of the tech challenges only a few actually made it into Second Life.

Posted by Barry at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today William and I worked together and found websites on AIDS in America. We found out that there is a lot of people dying of AIDS between 35-44 years. Sam also filmed all of us stating our reasons for doing our PSAs for last week. Now Sam is kicking us out.

Bye,
Brandon

Posted by VVP brandon at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, Sam and Tabitha brought a cool camera to the workshop. Unfortunately, we did not get to use it because Sam was using the camera to film one person from each of the group. The person who was filmed was asked to say four things which are their name, the topic that they were doing, the name of their group members and the reason that they picked the topic of their PSA. After filming, we did a bit of research about one of the global issues that we want to explore, and as a result Nafiza and I chose to do poverty.

Posted by VVP Ting at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today in Global Kids we got another look at the PSAs that we have created in our last workshop. We got to review them, which was really helpful because it helps us know what we did right and what we did wrong. Also a representative from each PSA group had to talk to in front of a camera to explain what their group topic is about. After it was done we had to think ahead about what our next project is going to be about. We had to brainstorm a topic and start a list of helpful links in order to decide later with the rest of the people what the next big project is going to be about.

Posted by VVP Armando at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's session consisted of one last look at our PSAs and having one person from each group to speak and introduce our group topic in front of a camera, in order to have some real life introduction footage for public viewers. After that was done, we researched new topics for the next big project. I was adding Jack and Hassan's title intros into the Second Life video as well. Once that was done I am blogging about it as I am doing right now. Stay tuned for my next blog about the PSA presentations because I gotta go!

Posted by VVP Idan at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are not much of us here today, so we didn't do much. We first started by watching all of our PSAs. We then watched the introduction. Since I wasn't here for the whole time last week I had to work on my Second Life introduction. After I made it, Sam uploaded it and then we found out about our next project. We also found out that we might have a field trip to go on. We also recorded a short clip to introduce our PSAs. Since we were finished early we got to leave a bit early.

Posted by VVP Hassan at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we did a mini-interview or short clip to add to our finished PSAs. We had to state our names, our group members, our topic and why we chose to do that topic. But before we did that we watched our PSAs again since some people were not there when they were finalized. Of course, we did not finish our PSAs completely because we still need to add the credits to it…but we will finish that later. Then again, there are only 9 people out of 23 here today…mainly because today is the last day of our spring break. Anyway, afterwards we did research on a topic we chose in partners, so Ting and I decided to do ours on poverty and we divided it up into causes of poverty and just poverty in general. Our next project will be making one big movie on one big global issue~ so it sounds fun! Can't wait until Thursday~!

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last class we had a whole day where our machinima program finished our PSAs (even though our group was finished already), then we had our PSAs presented to teens in other Global Kids online programs! It was a very fun day and it was interesting to have our work shown to others, especially on a big screen!

I am rather proud of all the work we've done and it seems that the people from the other Global Kids programs liked our PSAs, which gave me a strong sense of accomplishment.

Posted by VVP Joe at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After two months of work with Main Grid designer Geuis Dassin, with help from Blue Linden, Global Kids has brought to the teen grid a top machinima camera.

Purchase it on the teen-run TSL Emporium.

We apologize for the cost, as we are dealing with the main grid economy. Please get your own copy and come over to Global Kids Machinima island and start filming!

Please tag anything you post on youtube.com as "globalkidsislandmachinima" and let us know!

Below you can watch a short video demonstration we made:

Posted by Barry at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week, Global Kids launched FOCUS: Teen Voices on Digital Media and Society, located at www.FocusOnDigitalMedia.org. FOCUS is a series on online dialogues, led by teens, around issues they face in their digital lives. As part of the larger MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative, these discussions will serve to bring youth perspectives to many of the debates that academics, journalists, parents, policy makers and educators are already having about digital media.

Featured discussions from FOCUS will be posted here on the Digital Media Initiative blog, as well as being available to read in full at FocusOnDigitalMedia.org.

Posted by Rafi Santo at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Kids had the honor of being invited to contribute an article about our work with our Playing 4 Keeps program to Threshold Magazine. The Spring 2007 issue of Threshold: Exploring the Future of Education features articles focused on taking educational innovation to scale, produced in partnership with the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF).

Click here to read the article, and here to read the whole issue.

Posted by joyce at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned yesterday of the The Walk For Integrid Commerce

Their group's description reads:

"On May 6th. 2007, at 12 PM SLT, there will be a walk on the SL road from Meiji East to Opera. This walk will be the first protest walk in Teen Second Life.

Our mission is to get Linden Lab to grant teenagers permission to travel to the main grid's PG sims, and adults to travel to our public sims. We would have teen only sims (Teen Grid), as the MGers would have their mature sims.

Linden Lab, let our people go.
Invite people. Let's show LL what us teens can really do."

This is in conjunction with what has been named the Unification Proposal, which is reprinted below. It is exciting to see the teens self-organize through a grassroots campaign. We hope that some of those teens might report on those activities here soon, as many are involved with Global Kids.

Unification Proposal - Unite Teens with Adults
Proposed by Alex Harbinger along with the Teen Grid

Proposal - Unification

I, Alex Harbinger, propose that Teens be allowed to venture to the Main Grid's PG simulators, yet the Teens will still retain the Teen Grid for themselves.

Connecting the two Grids (Teen Grid and Main Grid) would allow for a more diverse community, which in turn would prove the underlying essence of 'Second Life' as it really is - A Second Life, adults with Teenagers. There should be no age discrimination, no segregation.

Teens should be allowed to venture to the Main Grid's PG sims. This may raise some problems however, such as: Legal and financial issues of exposing Teens to potential mature situations, the time and effort needed in allowing Teens onto MG-PG sims, adults disliking communications with Teens, and a magnitude of problems and issues that would arise.

By retaining the original Teen Grid, Linden Lab would evade any possible legal problems, and still keep their theme of a place 'only for Teens'. This would also allow for teens that wish to stay separate from adults, separate.

It may be needed that Teens on MG would have a tag in their profile alerting others that they are, indeed, teenagers. In order to counter-balance the problems that may come with this, teenager abuse reports against adults should take top priority, or teens should have their own 'support team' (Ex - The current 'Teen Grid Support' team becomes 'Teen Support', working with all Teen reports, regardless of Grid.

Adults would benefit from having Teens on the MG-PG sims in a magnitude of ways, including a more diverse community, being able to communicate not only across continents, but also across age groups. Adults would also be able to teach Teens how to mature, and in turn, Teens would be able to show off their creativity. Adults would still keep the Mature sims to themselves, so that any adults who don't want to see teens all the time can stay within the majority mature sims.

Linden Lab would benefit from this not only by being able to call their platform 'Second Life' and actually meaning it, but also by possibly allowing only Teens with payment info on file to be allowed on MG-PG sims, increasing both Teen-security, and allowing Linden Lab to retain more information on their customers, and increasing the chance of overall profits. This could potentially also increase the amount of customers Linden Lab has as more Teens would want to play, and adults that believe in a more diverse environment.

Furthermore, many Teens bring up the subject of 'economic meltdown' if Teens ever became able to buy MG items. Many residents on the Teen Grid have complained, "we aren't good enough!" or "there's no way we can stand up to adults! They spend 30 hours a day on SL!". Adults may spend more hours in a day per day on SL, but that does not mean they are all better then Teens, nor that Teen-created items will become obsolete. Many residents of the Main Grid encourage Teens to create, and are interested in Teen creativity.

A recent study showed that Teen-created objects sold better on the Main Grid then on the Teen Grid, not only in volume, but also in profits while the items were at an elevated price. The amount of L$ gained far succeeded that on the MG than on the TG with an EXTREME minimal amount of participation on the [seller]'s part (No advertising on MG; Lots of advertising on TG). If Teens sold their items on the MG, there would be no lack of L$-flow.

Teens are strong enough, by far. We are not useless!

I say Linden Lab, let my people go. Unite parents with their children, teens with adults. Give us a chance. Make Second Life what it was meant to be!

[For more information, visit http://www.alexharbinger.com - Updates will be posted as they come]

As an addendum, Alex sent us an email comment and gave them permission to post it:

From: "Alex" Subject: Message From Second Life Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 21:52:13 -0700 (PDT)

On the subject of adult-owned islands on the Teen Grid, I think they're an awesome idea, and should continue to be supported to the fullest. The Teen Grid is the home for teenagers across Second Life, and will continue to be no matter where Teens may venture to. I believe that allowing Teens on MG-PG sims would allow other adults to participate more in teen-related activities and may lead to many more adult-owned teen private islands. It is my hope that all Teens on SL will begin to utilize the programs that educators here provide us; especially those on the Teen Grid, where their main focus is on helping us, and getting us to help others. The resolution fully supports adult-owned Teen islands.

Posted by joyce at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Yesterday the Virtual Video Project put their finishing touches on their first machinima project - five 30-second long machinima PSAs about digital media.

We took a lot of great photos from the day - check them out below and click for more.

Posted by Barry at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On April 5th, 2007, thirty Global Kids leaders from five different Online Leadership Programs met each other for the first time at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens for the OLP Symposium. The teens toured the museum, presented the work from their programs, and participated in a panel for a Q&A.

The Playing 4 Keeps program began the day meeting with students and faculty at Parson's school of Design and Technology.

All of the students then met for lunch and then went to the museum. While the machinima students went to work on their final videos, the other programs - Newz Crew, Playing 4 Keeps, the Digital Media Youth Advisory, and GK in Second Life - went on tours of the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosted us for the day.

The students then gathered in the museums to show off the work from their projects.

Newz Crew
Anthony & Naama

Playing 4 Keeps
Syndie and Vladimyr

Digital Media Youth Advisory & Second Life
Haisu and Lucky

Virtual Video Project
Gershon, Angela and Idan

After each program presented all presenters sat for a panel and took questions from the audience.

All 40 photos can be watched in a slideshow.

Tabitha asked the last question of the day - Should we do this again next year? - which all in the audience answered with a resounding "Yes!"

Posted by Barry at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This just in! I received the following email for me from Blue Linden this evening.

Short story:
The geography of Teen Second Life is going to be restructured to clearly delineate teen-property from adult-property. This has occurred, in part, due to the conversations over the past three months, spurred by Global Kids, initially supported by the MacArthur Foundation, about the role of adults in the teen grid. The teens spoke and were heard.

Longer story:

This is an excerpt from an email I just happened to send to Blue and Claudia last week:

I envision... a proposal to Linden Lab for a clearly delineated line of the Teen Grid map separating Linden & Teen owned land from adult owned land (whether public or private). As Blue said recently during his interview with Philip on GK island, "It could very well be that in the next year, island ownership by individuals as well as edu/non-profits like Gkids becomes the primary business model for TG." I think that is correct. And this can mean more ADULTS owning land in the Teen Grid than teens. This is what leads teens like Cheesepuff to recently write, "Stop calling it the teen grid, at this point, it doesn't really deserve that name. Call it the near everybody is homeless grid. Call it the being taken over by adults grid." I think one approach for maintaining the youth-centric nature of the teen grid, while still allowing adults to own sims,... might be to go the route of making a clear physical delineation by making an adult section of the Teen Grid.

For example, look at this section of the map below:

So, the yellow circle is where the Global Kids estate is located. To the right is "orientation island". Just south is "TSL weapons testing sandbox." All of these adult and teen owned islands are all jumbled together, right off the mainland.

One week later I received the following mass email from Blue:

You are receiving this email because your estate is scheduled to be moved! In the interest of making it more obvious which teen grid sub-estates are owned by adults, which are owned by teens and which are owned by Lindens, we are going to be cleaning up the layout of the teen grid. This will better allow residents to choose to engage or ignore the experiences offered by educators, non-profits or businesses and to further empower those residents who would like maintain a teen-only experience in Second Life.

The new layout for the teen grid will place all Linden owned Islands to the Northwest of the TSL Mainland, teen owned Islands to the North, and adult owned islands to the South.

We will be choosing the location you will be moved to, but should you absolutely hate where we put you, we will provide one free move to a location of your choosing, within the zones described above. In the interest of thinking ahead, please reply to this email within a week, to let us know if you have specific plans to expand in a particular direction in the future. Say you know that you will be adding 3 sims to the south of your current estate. We don't have a date yet when the move will happen, but downtime is expected to be negligible as the process of moving your sim will require only a brief restart of your region. We hope that this process is of minimal impact on you and that the new layout is to your, and everyone's benefit!

This is fantastic news, not only for the future growth of teen-centric Teen Grid but also for the role of teen residents to help shape the future of their community. In the future months, Global Kids looks forward to working with TSL residents, Lindens, and other open-access island owners like ourselves to create a more formal process for teens to help shape the role of adults within their grid.

Posted by Barry at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today was a great day. We finished our PSA. It was a hard and difficult task, but we accomplished it. After all that hard work and last minute editing, we got our PSA screened on the big screen in the museum’s theater. It was an exiting and fun experience seeing other people watch our PSA. I also got a chance to meet new people from different Global Kids' programs.

Posted by at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey, long time no see!
My group on online discrimination is finally done. Me, Ting, Maria, and Alex was finishing our music and audio in the end. This is a great PSA.

Posted by VVP brandon at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, today is Thursday April 5th 2007, and it’s now12:28pm! I want to keep this time in mind because we are officially "done" with our PSA! ^^

Last week, when I was in Albuquerque, my group did a great job at editing our PSA~! ^.^ When I came back, I saw the PSA almost done, which is a great accomplishment because it was done in about an hour or so. Anyway, the PSA is much different from the actual script but I think it turned out much better! Anyway, our PSA was at 23 seconds when we started today, and we figured out that we did not add enough time behind our text--so we had to extend that and we ended up with 33 seconds~! It is a little over 30 seconds but it isn't extremely over. Thanks to Miguel's iTunes, we used the song "I like to move it" and with the help of Idan, we learned how to edit the song and incorporate it into our PSA and blend it with the time.

It feels great to be done, and I hope that everyone else likes our PSA! It’s okay if no one else likes it though because as long as we know we worked hard to make it and did all we could, it’s okay. Hopefully we can send out the message we want to send soon, because that is the important part of actually making the PSA right? I can't wait until we start our next project!!!

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On April 5th 2007, we finally finished our 30 seconds PSA. We worked for a long time on it and we are proud of how it came out. We can't wait to present it to the public! Angie, Nafiza, Mohamad, and Miggles (moi) learned a lot from this. We are now ready to work on the big project with the whole team of machinima kids.

Posted by VVP Miguel at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Doing the PSA was one of the greatest experiences ever. I learned how to make a short movie! I worked with the best group ever and we got the movie done. It took us 3 months of hard work, but the final project paid off. I hope I can do this more often on my spare time.

Posted by VVP mohamado at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HI EVERYONE WE HAVE FINALLY FINISH OUR VIRTUAL PROECT ON OBESITY.WE WILL SOON HAVE IT AVAILABLE FOR THE PUBLIC. WE ARE VERY VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT. IT WAS A VERY COOL AND WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE, AND IT TOOK A LOT OF GROUP WORK, PATIENCE, AND CREATIVITY. WE THANK ALL THE STAFF: TABITHA, SAM, MEREDITH, CHRIS, AND BARRY FOR THEIR PATIENCE AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE.

Posted by VVP Angela at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Luis, Mohammed, Armando and I (William) had to make a 30 second Machinima in second life. We made a storyboard as a strong guideline of what to film. Then, Sam and Tabitha gave us a camera in second life to film but it was not working well. So we decided to film normally in second life. We filmed Mohammed (we made his avatar look like a girl) and Luis in an Internet cafe talking to each other about two different articles they found on the Internet.

Posted by VVP william at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today Hassan and I finished editing our PSA. We added the audio part to our PSA. Since Jack did not come we had to improvise and use Hassan's voice. We had a hard time finding a quiet place. Everywhere we went we kept getting interrupted. After a while we found a good place. The timing was difficult. We kept messing it up. We soon learned that practice makes perfect. Soon after we started we finished the audio section for our PSA. The next part was the information section at the end of our PSA for people to take action.
iMovie was very annoying. It was hard to make the text the way we wanted. The font was too small and the writing was too long. The timing of the text also needed some work. I was getting very frustrated.

I feel proud now that I am done. After all these weeks of hard, tough and rigorous work I am finally done! The PSA actually came out better than I thought it would. I really like our PSA, and I feel that it spreads the message on media privacy..

We were a little over the time allowed but it is still a good length. Having a Mac at home helped me a lot when working with these Macs. Second life was annoying sometimes. It didn't want to work most of the time. The Internet in the museum was also not working sometimes. But I never gave up and I was able to persevere. I am proud of myself!

Posted by VVP Gerson at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we completed our PSA on Media Privacy. We had to finish editing our last scene and then we added sound. It wasn't hard considering I've had past experience in this area. Since we finished quickly we have nothing to do but wait until our presentation. Out presentation should be easy. We will talk about what we did. We'll explain how we made the video and what our PSA was about.

Posted by VVP Hassan at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well completing the P.S.A for my group was somewhat a challenge. However, it got a lot easier since mostly everyone in the group knew what they were doing. Idan, Joe, Nicholas, and Manpreet and I had little jobs . Like Joe, he had to work on construction. Idan worked on the filming and pre-production. Manpreet and Nicolas looked for information and pictures for some of our scenery. I helped by being the actor, YAY!!
And now that we finished we are helping the other teams out . Oh yeah I forgot! My team’s topic was on media piracy, and today we are screening it at the museum. So I hope everyone likes it

Posted by VVP Ronald at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had the pleasure of attending the 18th annual NYLC Service-Learning Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and brought along one of our finest GK youth, Nafiza, who is a student in our after-school Virtual Video Project program, to speak about our work in the virtual world of Second Life. I was also there to stream the conference into Second Life for the first time, and allowed teens in real-life to see teens in Second Life live during the opening plenary session. Everyone was curious about the teens they saw on the screens up on stage and were thrilled to know that those that were unable to attend the conference in New Mexico, were watching and listening in live from anywhere in the world.

For two days, we streamed the opening plenary session in the morning and a total of four workshops in the afternoon. We worked closely with the AV-Tech team, and the company that provided the Internet on-site. As a first timer to New Mexico, I was overwhelmed by the genuine smiles, hospitality and generosity by the folks there. We enjoyed cultural dances, Native Indian songs, Mexican food, and met with people from all walks of life. I talked to teens that were inspirational, and true leaders in the world of service-learning and volunteerism.

Along with Youth Noise, myself and Nafiza talked about Global Kids and our Online Leadership Program with roughly 40 participants. We encouraged educators to embrace the use of technology, we invited teens to participate in our online dialogue, and we played an ice-breaker game called Human Barometer, which gave everyone a chance to voice their opinion on using digital media and technology in their life. Overall it was a successful workshop and I was very pleased with the feedback.

Thanks to the folks at NYLC and Learn & Serve America for allowing us to share our work and stream the conference virutally for both adult and teen residents of Second Life.

Below are a few pictures from the event, for rest of the photos, please click here.
For all other materials related to the NYLC Service-Learning Conference, please click here.

Audience seeing the Second Life teens in real world during the opening plenary session, also known as a "mix-reality" event

Teens watching and attending the conference on Global Kids Island

Teens watching and listening to welcome message by Dr. James Kielsmeier's, Founder and President of NYLC.

Teens listening in to David Eisner, CEO, Corporation for National & Community Service, DC, as he speaks on the power of youth and service-learning in the U.S.

Teens watching and listening to Tabitha and Nafiza's presentation on "Youth in the Digital Age"

Teen from Israel watching a video on the aftermath of urricane Katrina in the workshop "Resources for Recovery"

Tabitha and Nafiza meets Dr. Jane Goodall, the honorary guest speaker at the conference

Posted by tabitha at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the workshop at the NYLC Service Learning Conference, teens in Second Life responded to the Human Barometer game, along with people in real life. Here is an excerpt of the online dialogue that occurred during the activity:

Statement 1: Race does not matter online. What do you think?

Richard Dwi: Race doesn't matter anywhere, we're all people

Nebby Xi: I agree, because nobody needs to use their race online

Robin Coalcliff: Ya, but people do, and there are people who discriminate others

Richard Dwi: I chose my avatar because he had a scar...

Smiley Barry: Well...I chose my avatar to be White as I'm White in real life too, but someone's race doesn't matter to me

Statement 2: Do violent games causes violent behavior? Yes or no?

Meatwad Extraordinaire: No, it's the individual who decides to ... do the violence? If violent games cause violence, then everyone would be violent all of the time

Richard Dwi: Only if those teens have outside pressure to be violent..

Nebby Xi: I agree, otherwise everyone on SL would be violent!

Smiley Barry: I mean some idiots DO get violence from it but most don't.

Richard Dwi: For example, if you play monopoly and have an unlucky streak and go to jail, normally you wouldn't punch someone in the face

Statement 3: Online relationships are just as important as offline ones.

Meatwad Extraordinaire: They are important, but again it depends on the individual, you may have more friends online, but have a few good friends in real life, or the other way around

Codedog Vandeverre: Offline is not as important, because your real life is more important than Second Life

Richard Dwi: online is a good way to meet people, but you shouldn't take it too seriously

Codedog Vandeverre: exactly

Smiley Barry: Well, yeah they're *kinda* the same, depends as some people treat it as real life relationships, and some don’t

Meatwad Extraordinaire: It's all linked to your real life, it's not like you have one brain for the online world and one for the real world

Richard Dwi: For example, I like Mariel Voyunicef as a friend, the same as I like my real life friends, but I don't take it serious enough to visit her place

Statement 4: It is safe to share personal information online. What do you think?

Smiley Barry: Depends, I only share my first name or last name. Mostly first.

Richard Dwi: It's not safe

Nebby Xi: NO, I disagree it’s safe.

Codedog Vandeverre: No, it’s not safe.

Meatwad Extraordinaire: Disagree, things are not always what they seem…

Cathy GKid: Er... nooooo ... you don't really really know who they are.. even adults fall for that

Codedog Vandeverre: aggreeing with Cathy

Richard Dwi: adults are sometimes easier to give it up

Smiley Barry: If I don't know the second person or people I don't share even a letter then I use my "net name".

Meatwad Extraordinaire: Yes, adults haven't had the Internet all their lives to realize things, so they don't always have as much of a grasp on it perhaps?

Smiley Barry: I don't even use MySpace because of privacy

Shawn Ay: I'm not fond of MySpace either. Many private schools banned it for the fact that people give out the info

Statement 5: Does using technology move you forward or back?

Richard Dwi: TECHNOLOGY MOVES YOU FORWARD

Codedog Vandeverre: hmm

Shawn Ay: Technology is everything we use.

Nebby Xi: FOREWORD

Meatwad Extraordinaire: Forward, even a wheel is technology

Smiley Barry: I use it pretty much for everything…So forward!

Shawn Ay: Technology is the process of developing objectives to fulfill our needs and wants.

Meatwad Extraordinaire: So, a stick is technology if utilized as a tool

Richard Dwi: sometimes, technology could get you addicted too, like videogames

Shawn Ay: Even a spear is technology

Statement 6: Teens cannot be trusted online unless they are under adult supervision

Codedog Vandeverre: my parents trust me

Richard Dwi: my parents trust me

Nebby Xi: NO, because I’m trusted and I’m able to do anything

Posted by tabitha at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WIth our recent talk at the Living Game Worlds conference in Atlanta and the at the National Service Learning Conference, a spat of blog entries on Ayiti have sprung up. Here are a few:

The following, from a review of constructivist learning and games, writes of both Ayiti and Darfur is Dying:

These two games are the most exceptional simulations/games I have come across yet. I believe that these games are beneficial for students of all ages (elementary school to college). These two games require playing the games several times to figure out the strategies involved. However, by playing the game several times the students come to the realization that it is not their ability to play the game well that is affecting their ability to excel at the game. The students must use the knowledge obtained about these areas of the world and combine with higher order thinking skills to make the connection that the purpose of these games are to illustrate the difficulty of surviving in these regions.

Another educator on game-based learning writes:

After experiencing some of these educational games first hand, I was amazed at the wide variety there is to choose from. Funbrain.com had fairly standard games, where for instance, mathematics and baseball were connected; the more problems the player got right the more RBI's for the batter. Gameaquarium has a similar format and forces on language arts and reading concepts. Darfar is Dying and Ayiti: The Cost of Life, on the other hand, were much more complex.
Each dealt with a real life situation. Darfar is Dying allows the students to be put into the position of a Darfarian and experience life as those people are experiencing it. Ayiti:The Cost of Life allows the students to understands concepts of daily life management, budget, etc. Generally speaking, I was extremely impressed with all of the games I played. This is definitely something I would use to reinforce education concepts for my students.

Finally, A teacher evaluating various simulation games:
http://jenmartin.blogspot.com/2007/03/games-and-simulations-in-classroom.html

Posted by joyce at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I was lucky to get the opportunity to travel to Albuquerque, New Mexico with Tabitha for the 18th annual National Service-Learning Conference. The conference was literally packed with people from all over the United States...and apparently there was supposed to be people from different countries as well, but I did not see any of them (or meet them). Or rather, the conference was not as diverse as I expected it to be. I guess, that is a little bit of a lie since I already knew the racial demographics of New Mexico. Nonetheless, everyone was very nice--much nicer than the typical New Yorker. In some way, I could consider myself to be more hostile than most of the people there. It was a little strange because...naturally I found it a little fishy when a stranger acted too nice (I blame New York), so when I was put in that situation I felt a little out of my element. Overall, it was a nice experience and it was great traveling with Tabitha.

We got there on Wednesday afternoon and it was literally crazy. However, looking back at it, it was pretty funny. Fortunately, the flight went pretty smoothly and we got there on time and checking in New York was not very strict. Our seats weren't too great but we had an extra seat next to us. Anyway, when we landed in Dallas all I thought was, "What happened to all the buildings?". There was...practically nothing in short terms, and New Mexico wasn't much different. It was a desert...but beautiful and mystical in its own way. On top of that, it was a cold desert! I did not pack anything warm, I packed for what I thought was desert weather. Thankfully, we spent most of the days indoor.

Anyway, when we got to the hotel...we found out that we did not have any rooms because they had put us as no-shows since they thought we were coming a day before. But after some time, we got our rooms--which were pretty nice. When you enter you see a sliding-mirror closet to the right, just outside the bathroom. The bathroom was pretty typical. But anyway, to the left, was first the door that connected to another room. Ahead of that was a little table with a medium sized rectangular mirror, and right in front of that was the bed I slept on ^.^~! Anyway...hmm... well right next to the table was the TV cabinet and then the table which had a lamp on it. On the other side of the room there was a door out and right before it was a little sofa-chair and a floor lamp. Anyway, right next to my bed was a nightstand with a reset alarm clock and lamp. Last but not least, in between the nightstand and the sofa-chair was Tabitha's bed~! In short, the bedroom was pretty nice--the furniture was all a dark mahogany (maybe black walnut?) color and the comforters and curtains were deep red colored.

Back to the actual conference... after meeting Ben we went over to the Conference Center and that's when it got chaotic. I guess, the aftermath of the flight did not leave any of us in too much of a cheerful mood--and the cherry on top was the technology issues! Of course, as a student in Machinima I know that technology challenge is something that should be more than expected. So, it wasn't so bad--but Tabitha and Ben were the ones that suffered the most since...I did nothing when it came to figuring out things about the broadcasting. Anyway, I think they made a great team because their personalities balanced each other out. Anyway, we found out that the person who was in charge of providing Internet did not find out about us needing the Internet until a week or so prior to our arrival. So, that added to some issues. Nonetheless, we got through it and everything ended up working. However, I did have to make a piece of paper and get up on stage...and we ended up being the last people to leave. But that was only being broadcasted on some random link that no one would have found...but one thing that we did find out was what went wrong at the plenary session that day...apparently, some performers showed up pretty late and they weren't even in costume. After all the chaos, we went to the East building where all the food was and we had dinner!~ Tabitha really liked her tacos ^.^!

The next morning, waking up was great because waking up “early” was really waking up late...since it was almost 8am in New York time. We had breakfast at the hotel which was great because Tabitha made her own waffles with the ready-made waffle batter (I don't know if it's called batter for sure though) and shared it with me, which tasted pretty good. I think it went fairly well on Thursday because we were both broadcasting and projecting onto the double side screens. Oddly enough, we really did not see much of Second Life being projected because they were busy projecting the speakers or slides. That came out to be a little funny because one of the Youth MC's welcome the SL residents by holding her hand out towards one of the double screens and most of the audience had no clue what was going on and I just laughed a little in my head. Anyway, at the opening plenary session, Dr. James Kielsmeier spoke with a director from State Farm (Kathy Payne) and she kept calling Second Life "Second Chance". Dr. Kielsmeier went along with it but put an exaggeration on 'chance' but I doubt that people actually got the joke because no one laughed the first time she said chance--which made me wonder if it was some other kind of company that I did not know about.

The odd thing that day was Jane Goodall's part in the plenary...because broadcasting her was not allowed. It was sad because she actually gave a pretty nice speech and she spoke for about 30 minutes...which was about a third of the entire plenary itself. However, I did get a chance to see her in her workshop which felt like a conversation, and she seemed great. She took everyone's questions and answered genuinely. However, her assistant-person (I really don't know her title or position) seemed like a true politician. I say that because when I introduced myself she did this little face and then nodded her head to say, "Oh right, yes I remember you now"...and I just smiled simply because I didn't want to be rude by telling her that she shouldn't have really known me because there was no reason for her to have heard of me before.

The first workshop was kind of scary because they set up the room to look like a hurricane just hit....and it really looked like the real thing. The workshop was called "Resources for Recovery" and it was a pretty interactive workshop based around disaster relief and recovery. The workshop was pretty funny because they ran sirens and then made people hide under the tables and etc--which was pretty scary, but I do have to admit that they did a great job in remaking a disaster scene. The con would be the fact that they set up the workshop so the processing part was all the way in the back of the ballroom where the camera couldn't go so Tabitha had to basically sum up what was going on to the SL residents throughout the workshop.

The next workshop I stayed in was very interesting. I thought doing the actual activities were interesting and well-thought out but I feel that the presenter did not manage time very well. It was interesting because the presenter spoke about service-learning with urban youths--which related to what we do in Global Kids in some ways and he had interesting points in his presentation. I liked doing the activity where we had to choose a shape to represent our leadership style the best...and I chose a circle because I guess that's what I feel most comfortable in and also because that's the usual Global Kid's conversing shape. Overall, it was not a bad workshop to participate in...on the other hand, I don't think it was very entertaining to broadcast or watch from Second Life.

The plenary session on Friday was interesting too. I felt Dr. Verna Price was a very strong speaker--but her attitude scared me a little. Most of her speech was about young girls and women being strong leaders. It was funny because I took a good look around the large theater room to notice that there was a majority of women there, but had not notice if not for her speech. Friday, I wasn't very much into actually being a part of the workshops because I was too concentrated on what I would say in the workshop that we were asked to present. Oh by the way, the lunch was great ^.^~. Tabitha was also a great help when it came to helping me prepare for what I was going to say the night before--I was very grateful for her help. One of the reasons I disliked myself in the UNICEF video was that I repeated the word “like” too many times! If only I could go back in time. “Like” should only be used when making a comparison between two things, or when using a simile and should not be used three times within a dialog that's less than 15 seconds long. Of course, I find that out now >.>~. But that's why Tabitha was a great help--when we went over what I would say she helped me figure out what I was repeating too much and hopefully I did not repeating something too much this time around.

Anyway, I think I put too much thought into what I was going to say because when it came to doing our workshop and me speaking I started off talking some weird-gibberish language that I didn't even understand. I just got tongue twisted because I was reading what I was going to say too much. I really don't know. I was afraid of the spotlight at first, but at the end that wasn't what scared me. I was scared because I was the last person presenting and we did not have much time left. We were supposed to have 25 minutes for Q&A but by the time I spoke we had about 15 minutes before the workshop would end. And all these things were running through my head~ and I was told to speak slowly and I really did not know how much I could really incorporate when I spoke slowly and still tried to include the essentials about Machinima. Anyway, I ended up skimming a lot because I did want for us to have some time for Q&A. I guess, at the end, I did okay~.

Our workshop was interesting. We had a huge turnout of teens...a majority of the people at our workshop were teenagers. We got some great feedback too based on the evaluation sheets. I think people liked the ice-breaker a lot, and I remember one person justifying themselves when they disagreed with it being safe to share information online by saying that there were a lot of creeps on the Internet. I guess, it is true to some extent, but it was kind of funny because we were being broadcasted live in a virtual community. I guess, I do have to admit that I do admire them for their honestly and bluntness. Also, the space we worked in wasn't great and far from ideal because it was not Global Kids like since everyone was dispersed throughout the room in little round tables and we were all in a pane restricted to our seats. Nonetheless, everyone liked Miguel dancing on the DDR when we showed the PSA my group is making. Plus, we had a couple of people say that they would join Second Life. So, I guess it wasn't bad ^^~! But I do think that if we could do it over again, maybe it would be better if Global Kids and Youth Noise had individual workshops because then both organization would be able to express their work in further details.

Afterwards, Brad took us to dinner which was of huge portions. I felt bad I couldn't finish my food though >.<~! At dinner, I had the pleasure of meeting a high school principal from Oregon who was very interested in learning about Second Life and what we do in Second Life. She said that the school she worked in was not exactly technologically advanced and she was looking to change that. I told her that Second Life or blogging may be the best platform to start off from. Of course, I wasn't the expert in this so I referred her to Barry because if anyone knew anything about getting kids involved in Digital Media it had to be Barry! But it was nice to see that people were actually interested in bringing digital media into service-learning. It was the one thing that made me feel like maybe I wasn't in the wrong place. I think it's great to see people actually interested in doing that because it would be taking one step forward, right? Anyway, I think I fulfilled something there. In addition, I also learned that people don't believe that I am a teen and also like my strange/peculiar name for some strange reason. Oh, and I discovered that I use too much of "actually" and "basically" when I free-write...and when I blog I use too much of "anyway" and "overall"'s.

Overall, the conference was a great experience. I would attend the conference again if I could ^-^~ but I just wish I could take everyone with me! I'm sure other teens would have enjoyed it as well, but I guess that just would have made it more hectic for Tabitha. It was a great conference and I hope that next year's Global Kids presenter enjoys it as well (and hopefully they do better than I did!) and I will be watching everything from home if they still broadcast it live in Second Life! ^.^!!!~

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)