On Saturday, June 28th, the Field Museum, the Biodiversity Synthesis Center and Global Kids launched an intensive summer camp for a group of teens in New York and Chicago that we call "I Dig Tanzania." Sixteen teens participated in this ground-breaking initiative that uses the virtual world of Second Life to educate them about Tanzanian culture and politics, scientific research and methodology. Here you will find a summary of each day's activities as well as many of the video, audio, and photos of the IDT teens in New York and Chicago as well as the scientists in Tanzania.
I Dig Tanzania Day One
To start the day, the teens and staff members put on their safari hats and backpacks and began their journey into Virtual Tanzania. The teens split into four cross-city teams, piled in their jeeps and were on their way. The first leg of the trip was spent at the library collecting maps and travel tips about how they, as researchers, could reach the Ruhuhu Basin in Southwestern Tanzania. As a team, they had to find the continent, country and cities they would travel through to reach their field site on a series of floating maps.
Once they had mapped out their journey, the teens traveled through a nature reserve complete with animated Tanzanian wildlife including lions, giraffes, elephants, and hippos.
As the IDT group met around the campfire for the first time, we watched a video of Ken, one of the researchers in Tanzania, confirming their location in Tanzania that we had just found on the map! Rik spoke with the international research team in Tanzania over Skype and asked many of the teens' questions about the journey to Tanzania and what their experience has been like thus far. You can check out what the scientists had to say here.
After the call, we learned about ecotourism in two of Tanzania's largest nature reserves and tourist sites, the Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro. To start off we learned the Jambo song, which is a welcoming song in Swahili. We all had a great time singing back and forth to one another -- first New York and then Chicago taking their turn as impromptu choirs. Afterwards, each team met in their tents to research the positive and negative effects of tourism on their region. Each team then created three travel tips that they could share with tourists to minimize their impact while traveling.
Our in-depth look at paleontology began with looking at evolution and time through Gondwana, the southern super-continent, and piecing together the land form as a puzzle. The teams then researched the six mass extinctions that have taken place on Earth and all correctly identified the period we would be looking at as the third extinction, between the Permian and Triassic periods. It was also interesting to learn that humans are causing the sixth mass extinction. To wrap up the day each teen was hard at work to build their own rock hammer. As we concluded the day with a blogging activity, each teen wore their hammer to show off their design. The rock hammer they designed will be one of the tools used for their fossil dig bright and early tomorrow morning!
I Dig Tanzania Day Two
The day began with more singing and language practice in Swahili, which the kids seemed to like. Dominique did a great job of getting everyone pumped for the day.
The most exciting part of the day was the highly-anticipated virtual fossil digging. To accomplish this, we had expert builder Amulius Lioncourt (aka Midnight Sun on the Teen Grid) create a complicated and realistic set of tools for unearthing the fossils that the teens had to wear on their avatars to get to the fossils. To start off, we watched the latest video from Ken, where he showed us how the team finds fossils in Tanzania. Not only did the teens have to work together to cover the large area of their dig sites, they had to figure out the proper order of tools to use to not damage the fossils.
After finding a set of fossils, the teens got another chance to interact with the team of real life fossil hunters finishing their dig in Tanzania. The kids asked a number of really great questions, from how the scientists chose their tools to how many pieces of fossil do they need to find to identify a particular animal. After collecting a large set of questions, Rik talked to several of the researchers over Skype, which we streamed into Second Life so the teens could hear the researchers answer the questions they came up with. Here is the conversation they had today. Then the teens returned to the task of preparing the virtual fossils that they found. To do this, we showed them a video of how fossils are "stabilized" by paleontologists with a glue-like solution so that they don't break.
Later the teens had to mix their own stabilizing solution using several possible ingredients set out on a work table. If they chose the right combination of ingredients, they were given a brush to treat their virtual fossils. This is probably sounding pretty complicated at this point, but the kids really seemed to enjoy the tasks.
After each team found the right solution, they were rewarded with shiny white "stabilized" fossils instead of the brown ones that they had unearthed. One of the toughest tasks of the day was learning how scientists classify the various forms of life using phylogenic charts -- maps of the evolutionary path of various creatures. The teens had to learn what a synapsid is, and create a sign describing a particular synapsid. Although this was quite a challenge for a number of our teens, they worked very hard on their task and produced some neat signs.
To close the day, we did a fun fishing exercise to teach them about Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa that borders Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
The teens got to pick up virtual fishing rods and "go fish" in a lake that Amulius set up for them. Various kinds of fish, from Tilapia to Nile perch were caught by the teens in various quantities, to show how certain species have come to dominate the lake due to the introduction of non-indigenous species.
I Dig Tanzania Day Three
Day Three started off by taking a deeper look at the Encyclopedia of Life. We watched a compelling video about the EOL to learn about this monumental effort to document all species by sharing images and information collected around the world. We then created our own species by adapting the appearance of our own avatars based on the climate each team selected.
This was a chance to look at adaptation and then design our own EOL page for our avatar. The teens' EOL pages can be seen here.
After lunch we spoke with the international research team in Tanzania and had the opportunity to ask more in depth questions about pursuing a career in the sciences. Here's what the scientists had to say. As we wrapped up the call, we watched videos recently uploaded from Tanzania showing how to jacket fossils and a quick video on what dinner in the field is like for the researchers. In order to prepare our fossils for assembly, each team divided up the bones they had discovered during their dig and each teen was responsible for becoming the 'expert' on their set of bones, creating hypotheses about where each bone might fit into their animal's skeleton.
After some solid hypothesizing, each team put together their fossil by manipulating the pieces of bones in order to assemble their tetrapod. Some teams realized their fossil was not complete, just like in the real world where you may not always find a complete fossil.
We then saw pictures of the four tetrapods and as a team had to decide and sit on the poster of the picture that matches the fossil. Our next task was to determine the size of each tetrapod by comparing them with the modern day animals labrador, pug, cow, and crocodile.
To wrap up the day we had jeep races through the mud, an experience shared by the international research team whose own jeep got stuck in the mud. One thing we learned is that none of us will be getting in a real life car with any of these fossil hunters any time soon!
I Dig Tanzania Day Four
The day began with Second Life being down for maintenance! We quickly devised a back-up lesson that didn't require Second Life, which involved giving the teens sets of questions to answer about Tanzanian culture and letting them watch selected YouTube videos to learn more. Once Second Life came back up later in the morning, we had the teens meet in their teams and collaborate on their answers before blogging about it later.
Then we got a real treat as a Tanzanian hip-hop artist named Eric came by for a visit. He explained various aspects of Tanzanian and Maasai culture that might have been confusing for the kids, such as the role of hip-hop in Africa versus hip-hop in America. Then he played a djemba drum and taught us a song. Check out the videos of the drumming and singing.
Shortly after, we were visited by Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. Here is what Mark had to say about education and Second Life. The New York teens and staff then took a short break to pose for a picture with Mark.
We took a lunch break and then came back to talk again with the researchers in Tanzania, who at this point had returned from the field and were in Dar Es Salaam preparing their fossils to be shipped back to the States. Unfortunately, the satellite phone connection was so bad that the kids didn't get much out of this conversation. It was some solace to know that they will get to meet in person several of the research team when they all go to the Field Museum at the end of July.
The final, quite difficult task we assigned to the teens drew upon all their skills as builders, writers, photographers, online researchers, and collaborators. Their assignment was to pull together all of the information that they had gathered at this point about their virtual fossil and present it as a museum exhibit with a diorama, a notecard of information, and a poster explaining their research process. The results were very impressive, showing how much they had learned and how well they worked together.
To work on their presentations skills, we had each team elect someone to speak on the team's behalf about their exhibit and what they had learned in the process. It was great hearing their actual voices, since for the entire program we had restricted them to just using text chat.
Finally, after the final exhibit was presented, it was time to party! We brought all of the teens to a picturesque pond area, where they had been fishing a couple of days ago, and set out a dance floor with pre-set dance animations. Rik, our DJ, played some African music, Barry handed out glow sticks, people set the environment to midnight, and the dance party was on!
To close the program, we brought everyone back to the campfire, took a group picture, and said our thank you's and "see you later's" to all the participants. Several of our New York teens seemed genuinely disappointed that they wouldn't be in Second Life after today, despite the technical difficulties and frustrations they had encountered over the past five days.
Here's a picture of most of our teens assembled together in Second Life in front of the virtual exhibits that they created together.
It's been a wild ride for all of us involved at Global Kids, the Field Museum and Biodiversity Synthesis Center in Chicago, and the researchers in Tanzania working together! In late July the New York teens and staff will pack our bags and board a plane to Chicago to meet our counterparts in person for the first time, as well as several of the researchers who will have returned from Tanzania by that time.
Thank you to all involved for your extraordinary effort and commitment, from the Global Kids staff, to our SL builder Midnight Sun / Amulius Lioncourt, our counterparts in the Field Museum Johanna, Andy, Krystal, Katie, Audrey and Elizabeth, the Tanzanian research team Ken, Bill, Christian, Seb, Linda and Roger, and our 16 teens from Chicago and New York who all did amazing work.
You can read the teens own impressions of I Dig Tanzania from their blog posts on Holymeatballs.org .
For the complete collection of videos from Tanzania, click here.
For the complete Flickr collection of photos from I Dig Tanzania, click here.
thank you so much for the letter and papers, Molly!! They meant a lot to me!!
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but I believe you should know the great things GLOBAL KIDS is doing for us.....
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