Hey everyone,
I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday! Keep it safe and remember don't get in a car with someone who is drinking. Remember be Above the Influence :)
-All of us at Above It
I received this group notice to my email in the car on my Blackberry while heading to a Christmas Eve gathering. It made my holiday to know that my work supports young people like Justin to be mature and responsible, who are leaders in their community and care about their peers. I don’t know exactly how many people are in the group, but it made me smile to think that all of those teens are going to have a friendly and happy PEER-based reminder to make smart choices. It was just a small moment in the craziness of my holiday, but it’s stuck with me since, and I wanted to share it with all of you. Thanks DIDI for giving me the opportunity to support kids like Justin!
The year 2008 was a remarkable period for the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids. It is challenging to even pick just a few standouts: An AIDS orphan in Ugandan exchanges text messages from her cell phone with a dozen teenagers in Teen Second Life; high school students conceive and produce a web-based game about local heroes during Hurricane Katrina; youth produce a seven-minute long animated movie about racism as an obstacle to education around the world; a high school class in Brooklyn uses a virtual world to learn about and create their own simulations about science; hundreds of young people across four virtual worlds watch Kofi Annan receive a major human rights award; incarcerated teens use a virtual world to learn how to create positive change in their real community; youth in Chicago and New York City collaborate online with paleotologists on a fossil dig in Tanzania; nearly 1,500 educators share knowledge and advice on how to use virtual worlds for education.
Global Kids would like to mark the new year by presenting a brief flyover of some of our major accomplishments over the past twelve months.
CIVIC PARTICIPATION
Games that Change Lives: Playing for Keeps
Playing 4 Keeps is an after-school program in which young people learn about global issues through playing and building socially-conscious online games. This year, we launched "Tempest in Crescent City" a web-based game that recognizes local heroes that emerged during the Hurricane Katrina disaster while educating its players about the essentials of disaster readiness. Meanwhile our game "Ayiti: the Cost of Life", developed by teens during the 2005-2006 school year, has been played over 2 million times.
Connecting Cell Phones and Virtual Worlds: Switchboard
While virtual worlds have enormous potential for education and civic engagement, they are largely inaccessible for people on the other side of the Digital Divide, particular people in the Global South. In order to address this disparity, Global Kids sponsored the development of a tool we call Switchboard. Switchboard is a fairly simple web-based system for exchanging short text messages between cell phones and virtual worlds such as Second Life. In September, Global Kids organized the first public test of Switchboard, facilitating a text conversation between a Victoria, a Ugandan teen, and a dozen young people in Teen Second Life.
Real Change through Virtual Worlds: The Dream it. Do it. Initiative
In collaboration with Ashoka's Youth Venture, OLP supported young people to make real change in the world around them through our virtual Dream it. Do it. Program. In 2008 the D.I.D.I. Initiative reached hundreds of young people worldwide, including youth in a U.S. jail who received $1000 in funding to bring positive change to their local community while still incarcerated.
GLOBAL ISSUES
Digging Virtual Fossils: I Dig Tanzania
In July 2008, Global Kids, the Field Museum of Chicago and the Biodiversity Synthesis Center worked together to organize the "I Dig Tanzania" virtual summer camp. This innovative project brought together 16 teens in Chicago and New York to learn about paleontology, scientific field research, and Tanzania culture using the virtual world of Teen Second Life. This blog post and YouTube video summarize the camp experience.
Supporting a Global Justice Network: the International Justice Center
On March 20, Global Kids launched the International Justice Center in Second Life. The inaugural event featured a discussion with Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Lloyd Axworthy, former foreign minister of Canada. Later that same day, the Justice Center hosted a simulcast of an address by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that was broadcast to the Web and to four online communities: Second Life, Teen Second Life, Whyville, and There.com. This brief video gives you some taste of what this historic multi-world simulcast was like.
Empowering Teens Virtually: Power of Citizenry in SL
In the past year, over a dozen teens in this leadership program created and helped facilitate global issue oriented events in Teen Second Life, reaching over 500 other teens through their projects. Leading events ranging from immigration workshops to mock presidential elections, these teens, located across the world, displayed the potential of virtual worlds to provide a platform of peer education on global issues.
Digital Movies that Matter: The Virtual Video Project
On June 26, at the Sony Wonderlab in Manhattan, a diverse group of New York City public high school students, involved in Global Kids' Virtual Video Project, premiered "Race to Equality," an important new animated movie that exposes how racism relates to equal access to education. The film was created by our youth entirely in Teen Second Life. The first VVP movie "A Child's War" produced in 2007, has been viewed over 10,000 times on YouTube and screened at conferences, film festivals and on television.
21ST CENTURY LEARNING SKILLS
Teleporting to Antarctica to Measure Climate Change : Science in Second Life Class
Global Kids launched a high school level class to teach basic science skills from a global perspective, while meeting New York state standards. The class met every day in person in GK’s High School for Global Citizenship and online through Teen Second Life. Through the virtual world, the students visited simulations of places around the world like Naples, Italy, where they learned about the environmental impact of garbage, and Antarctica, where they flew into the atmosphere to measure the impact of global warming. An outside evaluator found that the students’ attitudes towards science-related careers changed positively over the course of the class while the grades of low achieving students showed significant improvement.
Youth as Producers: the Media Masters Program
At the start of this school year, Global Kids had the opportunity to create a new school-based program here in New York City at Global Kids' High School for Global Citizenship. Working with MIT's Project New Media Literacies, we've been working to create a program based off of activities developed at MIT that promote civic learning and participation through a wide range of participatory media tools. Through blogging, mapping, photography, video production and more, teens in Media Masters work to create a Digital Portfolio of media artifacts that along with a Digital Transcript will display their acquisition of new media literacies. You can check out some of the program's early work here.
Youth Informing Professionals: The Digital Media Youth Advisory
This group of teens has worked for three years to inform the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative through their unique voices and perspectives as young people. In the past year, they've worked with Harvard's Goodplay Project, MIT's Project New Media Literacies, the Pew Internet and American Life Project and others to help keep the overall MacArthur initiative grounded in the real experiences and opinions of teens.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Building the Field of Virtual World Educators: RezEd.org
In April, Global Kids launched RezEd.org, a community of practice that brings attention to the myriad ways virtual worlds are being used for learning in various settings. RezEd covers a broad educational virtual worlds through news updates; multimedia resources; a podcast series with youth, theorists, practitioners and experts in the field; various digital media resources, weekly best practices, guest-moderated discussions, etc. Although still in beta, RezEd experienced tremendous growth, growing from a handful of educators largely active in Second Life to 1,400 members using a variety of virtual world platforms for learning. Read the first seasonal RezEd report for more on this.
Building the Field: Curriculum Support
As part of our work to support educators using virtual worlds in their work, Global Kids released the free Second Life curriculum in September. The curriculum, divided into nine levels, covers everything an educator or student would need to know to use Second Life, whether on their own or within an educational setting. Released under a Creative Commons license, the curriculum has already been adapted by educators into different formats, including a print version and a digital booklet in Second Life.
Bringing the Real World to Virtual Audiences:Simulcasting
In 2008, Global Kids produced a wide range of "mixed reality" and simulcast real world events that brought new audiences from around the world to conferences, ceremonies, roundtables and workshops on a range of subject matter. These included an address by Archbishop Desmond Tutu on youth leadership, an awards ceremony featuring Kofi Annan, the first annual symposium of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and a film premiere of three youth-written films.
Documenting Best Practices: Global Kids White Papers
Our thanks to our many supporters, partners and friends who made this work possible, in particular: AMD, Ashoka Youth Venture, Asia Society, the Biodiversity Synthesis Center, the Field Museum, Gamelab, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, GirlStart, HASTAC, the International Criminal Court Public Affairs Division, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, MediaSnackers, Microsoft, MIT (Project New Media Literacies), Motorola, Sandbox Summit, Taking IT Global , and the USC Network Culture Project.
As this year comes to an end, I’d like to take a moment to thank my remarkable colleagues for their constant support and drive towards making our work so very worthwhile.
For the humor, the collaboration, and the desire to constantly strive forward.
For the exploration, the unyielding expectations, and the ability to allow our obstacles and challenges to strengthen our work.
For the lessons learned, the reflection, and the determination for all of us to learn from one another.
For the time we take to support one another, to question our work, to strive to do more.
For the smiles that greet me every morning when I come in...
And for the feeling I have as I pack up every night knowing, that tomorrow, we will do work that is compelling, innovative, and meaningful.
To my incredible colleagues at Global Kids and to the amazing young people I've had the privilege of working with,
I thank you for this 2008.
RezEd Podcast, Episode 23- Aaron Walsh, Director of the MediaGrid on Learning and Project Wonderland
(WORLD) The twenty third RezEd podcast, produced by MediaSnackers with Global Kids.
Aaron Walsh, Director of the Media Grid and Immersive Education Initiative and in 2007 was named one of the 40 most innovative people in the information technology industry by Computerworld. Project Wonderland is a project run by Sun Microsystems that aims at developing a tool kit for the creation of custom virtual worlds (MUVEs).
Show Notes:
0.00—0.24 intro
0.25—3.56 RezEd news with Rik and Amira at Global Kids (any news or events can be submitted here)
4.06—4.21 intros
4.30—7.18 learning about the education gird
7.19—8.08 why/how it developed
7.01—10.27 people/story behind the Media Grid and Immersive Education Initiative
10.28—12.27 how the grid is rolling out
12.28—17.46 how it will be used
17.47—21.37 thanks
21.38—23.59 Rik and Amira detailing the upcoming events for the RezEd community (any news or events can be submitted here)
24.00—24.08 outro
December 19, 2007 started off super-crappy but ended super-awesome.
That morning, I updated my status on the micro-blog Twitter as "jobless." A few minutes later, I got a text message from Barry Joseph : “Sorry to hear the news. Please call when u can.”
Barry is a guy I had known for about a year from his impressive work directing the Online Leadership Program at the youth development non-profit Global Kids. Apparently Global Kids was in need of some fairly specific expertise – online community, virtual world, United Nations, and nonprofit coordination. Serendipitously, my peculiar resumé matched the position very neatly.
So a couple of text message exchanges and phone calls later, and I was the new Second Life producer at Global Kids. My first day on the job was January 3, 2008.
It has been a wonderful ride in my first twelve months at Global Kids, far exceeding my own expectations. I feel that it is important to mark milestones in your own professional development, appreciate your own accomplishments and reflect on where you could have done better. So what follows is a brief summary of my own work in my first year at Global Kids.
Major Projects I have implemented a number of projects and Second Life events on behalf of Global Kids in 2008. Here’s a brief list of some of them:
Over the year, I have become better at understanding the resources and staffing needed to successfully produce events in the virtual world. That said, I think we have a lot to learn about how to scale events beyond at most a couple hundred participants to something approaching a mass audience. At the same time, I would like to figure out better ways to engage virtual participants with the subject matter using the affordances of virtual worlds.
Repping Global Kids All of us in the Online Leadership Program are responsible for representing the organization publicly, whether it be speaking at a real world conference, attending a mixer event, blogging about the work, or using our own professional networks on behalf of Global Kids. In fact, we get so many invitations to participate in public and professional events that we often have to choose between presenting our work and doing our work. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job: talking to others about all of the awesome work that we are doing at Global Kids and sharing my own excitement about the tremendous potential for virtual worlds for education and public good.
In 2008, I represented Global Kids at a number of convenings both in the real world and virtually. Among them:
Guest Appearance on Metanomics Virtual Talk Show (June)
USC Colloquium on Developing a Research Agenda for Virtual Worlds (July)
Second Life Community Convention / SLED Community Conference in Tampa, FL (September)
State Department Virtual Education SL Panel (October)
I also made a concerted effort to maintain my ties to my own professional networks with the United Nations nonprofit communities, the international justice networks, the Second Life nonprofit communities, and media reform groups.
Over May and June, I was honored to serve as a selection committee member on the USC Public Good in Virtual Worlds Challenge. The USC Network Culture Project launched this initiative to fund promising “public good” projects that emerged from Second Life communities. I sat on the final selection group alongside Craig Wacker of the MacArthur Foundation, online community guru Howard Rheinhold, Lori Bell of the Alliance Library System, and Randy Moss of the American Cancer Society.
I have been an enthusiastic blogger and social media person for several years. I brought over to Global Kids that enthusiasm, blogging almost obsessively about the work on our official blog at http://www.holymeatballs.org. In addition, I have enjoyed taking photos, screenshots, live video, machinima footage, audio recordings and chat logs of the projects that I’ve been involved in.
Personal Goals for the Coming Year As we enter into 2009, I feel so lucky that we are able to continue our online work in the midst of a recession. Thankfully, we have a number of foundations and corporate funders who continue to support our work, which in many ways is still quite experimental with a high rate of failure.
I have a number of personal goals for my own work in 2009:
Be a Better Manager : As our projects develop and grow and our staffing remains largely unchanged, we will need to manage our personnel and organizational resources as effectively and parsimoniously as we can. I would like to be a better staff coordinator, helping everyone do the best job and be as satisfied with their own work as possible. Meanwhile, I want to do better at tracking my projects’ spending and costs and keeping the bigger picture of the organization’s budget in mind.
Bring in New Sources of Support: I am confident that there are other institutions that would like to invest in the kind of innovative education and civic engagement work of Global Kids. I hope to better leverage my own connections with potential supporters of our work to bring in new business. And in general to do better at communicating my own enthusiasm for our work to others.
Help other Nonprofits use Virtual Worlds: I have learned so much about what works and doesn’t work in virtual worlds since the publication of my report “Best Practices for Nonprofits in Second Life” in September 2007. I would like to help other groups not make the mistakes I made and integrate virtual worlds into their program activities in an informed and sustainable way.
Produce Better Simulcasts / Mixed Reality Events: For the near future, bringing real world events into virtual worlds is going to be one of our main activities at the Online Leadership Program. In 2008 we experimented with a number of different ways to produce these events, some that worked beyond our expectations and others that fell flat. In 2009, I would like us to build upon that experience to continue to do innovative and fun virtual simulcast and mixed reality events. In particular, I would like us to learn more about how to scale our events to larger audiences and to increase their level of engagement with the subject matter using virtual world tools.
In many ways, 2008 was about learning what is possible in virtual worlds for one small nonprofit. I think 2009 will be more about speading out the lessons we are learning to a broader constellation of public and nonprofit institutions and getting our message out to wider publics.
In our modest plot of virtual land, Global Kids has sprouted some interesting fruit. Time to bring that fruit to market and sow some seeds in other fields.
[staff] Having my own little slice of the internet
Over the course of my time working in the Online Leadership Program, I've watched my own "digital footprint" grow on the internet. It's grown both intentionally as well as unintentionally. Each time I personally post something to this blog, or join a new social network where my profile is searchable, each time I present at a conference or write a paper for a journal, I intentionally add to the footprint. But it also gets added to in hundreds of other small and unintentional ways by other people that post pictures, write blog posts, comment, tag and share various things about me.
As I've engaged in the vast online world, I've tried, to various degrees of effort and success, to shape this footprint. I've done this partly out a sense of privacy and having control over who was seeing what about me, as I don't necessary want everyone in the world to see everything that I share with my friends or colleagues. This is one of the reasons that Facebook has been so successful; it gives a great deal of control to users to decide who in the world gets to see what about them. (Though it certainly isn't perfect or airtight in this practice.)
But I was also taking to heart something that danah boyd writes about, that being the idea of creating a public internet identity. She writes about the persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences that characterize public information on the internet, and the importance of engaging intentionally in the process of being public online, just as a responsible person would be sure that they're wearing presentable clothing when they leave the house in the morning.
So many people, and youth especially, are active in socializing and hanging out via the internet, and in the process often unwittingly create public identities without meaning to. And while reputation is ultimately a worldly notion that I don't think we should obsess about too much, it does make a real difference in people's lives and their ability to be effective in society.
And so, after seeing all the various little breadcrumbs that I was leaving all over the place on the internet, I decided recently that it was time to create a personal central place from which I could both voice my thoughts as well as have a sense of intentional presence on the internet. Empathetics.org is my own little slice of the internet, and an experiment in what it means to live a public life online. At a certain point I'll check back in and let you know how it's going.
[mm] Tackling Intellectual Property in an afterschool setting
For the past couple of weeks in Media Masters, we've been spending time on the idea of appropriation, defined in NML's white paper as the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content. Before we delved into what appropriation means in a global issue context and having the students utilize this skill through their own media creation, we decided that it would be relevant to learn and talk about the concepts and practices around Intellectual Property, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. As the program is all about having teens become producers of media, it's important that they understand not only what the concept of IP is and when it's ok to use other people's work in their own media creations, but also to understand how to be empowered to make decisions about how other people use their creative works.
We look forward to sharing on this blog some of their thoughts on the subject and their own media appropriation projects, but I thought in the meantime I might post some skits they did about various concepts regarding Creative Commons. Enjoy!
Brad Maguth on his blog Global and Social Studies Education posted recently an entry entitled Video Games for Citizenship Education in a Digital Era. In it he discusses video games as not only being great educational resources, but catalysts for youth to participate socially, economically and politically. The post also goes on to list his top ten of Serious Games in which he lists GK's Ayiti: The Cost of Life.
A growing number of today's students are turning towards digital media to participate socially, economically and politically. W. Lance Bennett, in a study commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation on digital media and learning, entitled Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age (2008), describes how digital natives are using new technologies to impact their world. Using the Internet to access information, communicate, and organize, today's youth have demonstrated the power of electronic technologies in making a difference. As evident in the 1999 protest of the WTO in Seattle, young activists are seizing these lines of communicate to arouse bottom-up civic participation. Bennett (2008) describes how many students disengage in traditional top-down politics. Moreover, these same students often find bottom-up politics more relevant and authentic (As evident in increased levels of student participation in volunteering, study abroad and community commitments). Favoring loose networks of community action, these students frequently turn towards electronic technologies like social networking sites to access and discuss economic, social and political issues.
Today's digital natives are frequently turning towards electronic communications to learn about and discuss important issues. However, the infusion of these technologies inside the classroom has been lackluster at best. Particular, the area predicated on fostering strong and active democratic citizens, the social studies, has failed to make effective use of electronic technologies (Diem, 2004; Berson, 2005; VanFossen, 2008). There seems to be a mounting divide in the realities of how digital natives are using technology for informed and active democratic citizenship inside versus outside of the social studies classroom (See Maguth, 2008). Thus, the use of outdated mediums for civic education in the social studies results in young people finding them irrelevant and unauthentic. This reinforces a greater divide in teaching and learning. My dissertation research begins to examine this issue more in-depth.
With over 90% of students in a recent survey indicating they frequently play video games (Friedman, 2008), advocacy groups have been moving fast to construct video games for educative purposes. This has led to the creation of 'serious games'. Serious games aim to teach students by realistically simulating some aspect of a given situation. Some examples include: business training games, flight or driving simulators, games that help patients understand how their bodies work, and games the allow players to navigate through and make decisions on a contemporary global issue. Serious games hold great promise in education because they allow users to test and experiment with systems, and develop a better understanding on relationships embedded in the system
Well on Tuesday, December 23, the class was optional, so people didn't have to come. I came and seven others came. We got our props collected in our inventory in Second Life, where we'll be filming our stories on our online identity.
I went to different Seocnd Life islands and got stuff like a penguin, and a dress. I got a computer in SL from one of the Global Kids interns. He told me about different places to buy clothes and furniture. It was fun exploring new places. I can't wait til we start filming our stories!!
Happy Holidays! Everyone!
So far in this program, I enjoy the games the most, and the new things we have learned in second life.
I enjoy second life because you can be whoever you want to be. And you can do whatever you want, as long as it's within the GK guidelines. To me,second life is all about being free and letting go. I also think it's about focus and hard work in the program.
That's what second life means to me.......see you!
[mm] GK's Media Masters send love from 52 to 48, and from 48 to 52
In a recent project in Media Masters, teen in the program created messages of reconciliation and solidarity for a project called from52to48withlove. Zefrank, the wonderful web artist that created the project (and longtime friend of GK) posted the photo messages that the teens created, and posted them on the project site.
[staff] Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials and Global Kids
Global Kids (online and off) uses and produces a prodigious amount of media over the course of its program year. We realized several years ago that in order to prepare our youth to be effective 21st century citizens, that they had to be media savvy, both as consumers and producers of various kinds of content. Our trainers everyday use music, video, magazines, poetry and many other forms of media in their work with Global Kids teens around the city and around the world.
Given this, it behooves us to be as informed and savvy as possible in how we use media content, particularly in regards to intellectual property and copyright. One important area of copyright that impacts our work is "Fair Use" and its various applications.
"Fair Use" is an important part of United States copyright law, codified in the 1976 Copyright Act. Here's section 107 of the Act:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Basically what this means is that while in general the copyright holder of a particular work (i.e. a book, movie, or song) retains a high level of control over how their work is reproduced and distributed, in certain specific circumstances and in limited ways, the public has a right to access and reproduce copyrighted work. For example, as the author of a book, owning the copyright means that I can restrict others from reproducing that book and reselling it as their own. But I can not stop someone from quoting a passage from the book in an online review or a high school term paper. That's Fair Use in action.
Global Kids' work falls under several of these stated "Fair Use" applications, including:
Criticism: We encourage our youth to examine critically the media messages that they receive, whether it be television news coverage, mainstream newspapers, or internet sources.
Comment: Our youth often (and loudly) voice their views on media in the course of their work with us.
News Reporting: GK has been involved with youth reporting projects in the past, particularly Newz Crew.
Teaching: obviously.
So the good news is that Global Kids has several strong arguments for our usage of copyrighted media falling under Fair Use. Which is good since we do produce and distribute a lot of media. Some examples of our usage:
Comic books that we create on different social issues
A public radio show that features different youth that we work with talking about their lives, including music they listen to, movies they watch, etc.
A key aspect of Global Kids' programs as they pertain to Fair Use is that we encourage our youth to transform the media they encounter. This "transformative" usage of media is much safer from a legal standpoint than simply reproducing media in its original form. So projects that have youth remix, mashup, and re-contextualize copyrighted media is very defensible in a court of law.
So Global Kids is in a good position in regards to Fair Use.
Of course Copyrighted material is just one area where the law meets media content. In our programs, we should be presenting the various possible licensing arrangements for media, including:
licensed work that requires permission to use,
work in the public commons because of its age or the license holder has released it to the commons
Beyond the letter of the law, there's the broader picture of ethical and societal questions of "fair use." I.e. what is a fair balance of the rights of the creator and the rights of the consumer / audience? What kind of media rights world do we want to live in? These are not easy questions to answer, but they are ones that we need to confront ourselves and pose to our teens if they are to be thoughtful, effective 21st century citizens.
[conf] Scenarios USA & Global Kids premiere 3 youth films in Second Life
On Wednesday December 17, Global Kids and Scenarios USA presented the virtual premiere of three youth-written films in Second Life. The screening brought together around 50 teens and adults on both the Teen Grid and Main Grid of Second Life. The audiences got to watch three short films on the subject of "The Real Deal with Masculinity" written by teens in Texas, Cleveland and New York.
A report on the event follows after the jump...
All three films this year were very entertaining and insightful examinations of how young people experience masculinity and male stereotypes and roles. The short films all leave you hanging and wanting the stories to continue, which is the sign of a good film.
It was really neat having Amina and Tiauna, two of the youth screenplay writers from NYC, and Rob York, managing producer at Scenarios, in the audience during the film showings. They provided live commentary in the open chat about the films as they were showing, kind of like listening to the commentary on a DVD but more immediate. The teens chatted about which scenes they had written, little factoids about the sets and the actors, and other useful information. Meanwhile Rob typed about the production process in the three different locales.
After the screening, Amina, Tiauna and Rob York answered questions from the two audiences.
The process of how these films are created is really fascinating. Rob York explained that every year Scenarios USA holds an open competition for screenplay ideas for teenagers around the United States. Three winning submissions are chosen from three different regions of the United States, through a lengthy vetting and consultation process.
The winners are paired with accomplished directors who help them refine their ideas into a more workable script, which is then produced by Scenarios using professional actors, film crew, editors and producers.
The virtual audience was very curious about the teens involvement with the film-making. Amina clarified that the teens did all of the writing of the films and were involved in the editing process.
Another teen asked what the teens next project was going to be. Amina typed that "currently a few of the writers and myself are working on making our screenplay into a feature film." Tiauna explained that she has always wanted to be in the film business for her whole life, so she sees this as a big first step for her.
One teen asked what message the teen writers wanted to convey from the film. Tiauna talked about how masculinity was a part of everyone's lives, whether they were male and female. And that there were ways to take masculinity and use it in positive ways.
All-in-all, it was a very rich experience for us at Global Kids, Rob, Tiauna and Amina from Scenarios, and the teens and adults from Second Life. While there were certainly technical difficulties -- particularly for some of the teens from Scenarios in other locales -- we see a great potential for these kinds of multimedia, youth-driven virtual events for the future.
So--it's all coming together. We've finally made our first story boards about Online Identities, with a mere 4 screen-caps to go by. Each of our Mini-Machinimas are going to be no more than 30 seconds long, and we'll all have to pick out the props and do the voices ourselves. The real work begins in January, when we'll be setting up our scenes and trying to record our videos. My Story Board was about Ageism, and how sometimes, even online, you can be discriminated against for the most idiotic things at times . Anyways, can't wait to start!
yay!! We are off to the theaters (while i was thinking that we were going to watch a play, but...) we had a tour. It was an amazing experience. I went to so many stages (three of them in fact...). That place was so medieval and inspiring. I wish to see a play there someday. By the way, the theater is called the Public Theater. When they first bought the theater, it was only one dollar!! hHow amazing is that? It used to be a library and the Mayor thought NYC should have a theater and sold it to a lucky person.
I cant wait to go on another field trip <3
I'm really going to miss my fellow members over the Christmas break, MISS U TABBY....... ANYWAY
I really enjoy the virtual video project because I can act like myself around everyone and that's what I like the best.
There's a different variety of people here.
-tawana
[In the Media] Coverage of MacArthur's Digital Youth Research
We were excited when the findings from the MacArthur Foundation's three-year ethnographic study of young people’s digital media use was released by Mizuko Ito and her colleagues last month in the publication Living and Learning with New Media.
The MacArthur Foundation Spotlight blog in a recent article, summarized some of the coverage around the blogosphere, and elsewhere, in their media roundup on the reports. This included our own Rafi Santo's write up on this blog and Global Kids simulcast coverage of the forum that MacArthur sponsored last spring. You can view both parts one and two of this on YouTube.
[p4k] Author behind book behind CONSENT! sings GK's praises
Two years ago, the youth in our Playing 4 Keeps program created CONSENT!, a game about medical racism against African American male prisoners. It was based on a chapter from Harriet Washington's remarkable Medical Apartheid.
We tracked her down to tell her about the game and she wrote us this lovely note below, which she gave us permission to reprint here:
From: "Harriet Washington"
Subject: Re: CONSENT!
I was happy to hear from you. As it happens I had already seen CONSENT! ( I get alerts on some web entries that mention the titles of my books) and was really impressed. I'm very happy that young people understood the issues so well and am just blown away by their creativity. They- and you- are to be commended for pursuing what's really important in such a smart and innovative manner.
I love your program's focus on global issues by the way. I feel I profited by spending part of my childhood living abroad and I like to think that our period of cultural isolationism is coming to an end, so these kids will need information in a global context, languages etc. My schedule is way overbooked now, but let me know if I can help in the future.
When I see achievements like CONSENT! I feel that the future is in good hands.
Warmly,
Harriet
[Harriet Washington] has unearthed an enormous amount of shocking information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book.
The New York Times
2007 PEN Oakland Award, nonfiction; 2007 BCALA Award, nonfiction; 2007 Myers Award
2007 National Book Critics' Circle Award, Nonfiction
www.medicalapartheid.com
Hey guys! Interested in reading our blogs? As we are interested in writing blogs of what we do in Global Kids and what we did last past week. I was in the justice group and the article that I found was about Genocide. People were murdered for no reason. Millions of people died in last past few years. As the country government are trying to do something about it but they can stop this people from murdering others. As days goes by the genocide is been spread everywhere it’s not only countries. Then we went on second life and build a board where we put our article picture as you can see it in here too. Well not the second life to build board but you can see the picture. After that we choose an amendment article that goes with the news article. From amendment article I chose 17 because it talks about kid’s right and their safeties and that I think government should protect children and people not only from real life but from internet too.
I am enjoying this program. I've found the people here very interesting. There are people here that I thought I would never talk to but I do. I also enjoy the games we play here. It gives me a chance to actually talk to the members of the program and laugh and joke.
Since my topic was peace, I chose an article that related to ending violence; UNICEF working to end the use of child soldiers in Sudan as well as helping former ones get back to civilian life.
My social justice billboard was about child sexual exploitation in the United States. I chose this topic because I have always been interested in sexual exploitation and trafficking of innocent children-it is embarrassing how these victims are often ignored. The child sexual exploitation in the U.S. got my attention, because people rarely take notice of these situations occurring in developed nations. I picked my story, which was about statistics that revealed sexual exploitation cases in the States, by searching on The New York Times website. I thought that the news story was interesting in that the majority of such exploitations occurring are often unnoticed because it is done by family members of the victims. Statistics showed that the reported events on news, often involving strangers abducting and raping children, make up the least percentage in the exploitation "industry" in the States.
My snapshot shows a little girl in the corner crying. I am trying to show that it is our job to take responsibility to protect the young, innocent, and weak.
My billboard shot is a medium shot picture. My billboard is about a homeless guy who doesn't have anywhere to live. At the same time, pretty much all homeless people, male or female, are treated like trash and they aren't treated with respect. Most of the homeless people are war veterans and risked their lives so that America can be safe from bad people.
My theme was "Lack of justice", and my news article was about the Sean Bell trial. I didn't think it was fair: How can you shoot someone over 50 times and NOT be guilty of doing it? My billboard was a black & white picture of an American flag with around fifty bullet holes in it. I can't find a picture of my avatar with the billboard, but I'll upload the photo used for the billboard instead.
My billboard was a picture of a scale with Sudan in the middle of the scale and one side had a bear and the other had a bunch of dead bodies. The scary thing is the bear was out weighing the dead bodies. The article I had was on child souldiers in Sudan being taken from there homes to fight, that was sad.
I feel that immigrants get treated wrong in the worse kind of way, and I feel that the government should loosen up a little on immigrant laws, or at least give some of those who are illegal a chance to speak and tell their reasons to coming to America.
I also think green cards shouldn't take so long to get or be so unaffordable.
I feel that all the immigrants should be given the God-given chance to a better life for them and their families.
Is that not the reason for the Statue of Liberty? Justice, peace, power, and freedom to all.
Today I am blogging because I want to share my wonderful experience of making my own billboard. My billboard was about the assassination of Jewish people in Mumbai. The theme of my billboard was lack of justice, and I picked the article of the assassination in Mumbai because it showed very clearly how there was lack of peace among the people. My shot of my billboard was a wide shot of me sitting on top of the billboard and the billboard on the bottom. It was a wonderful experience sharing my ideas with the rest of the group and also to learn how to do a billboard in Second Life.
My news article was about a women that was stabbed in Brooklyn. I worked it together with the law that states children need to be protected from such things under the CRC.
Children should enjoy their time as children and not be stabbed.
My picture was a bloody knife simply restating how no one especially children should get hurt.
I finally created something of my own in Second Life. It was not as hard as I thought it would be. We all learned how to create large billboards that were used to display individual topics. My topic was about the right for child education. I chose that topic because I feel that every single child has the right to learn, read books, go to school and expand their minds. I used a picture of a young, little boy reading an article for my billboard. The reason that I chose this picture was because I thought that it was very interesting to see such a young boy capable of reading and understanding an article. Thanks to the United States Of America, every child living within any of the states has an 100% right of learning and attending school. I agree that it is very important to go to school, without an education it is hard to make it through life.
My billboard was on the case of Plaxico Buress. During a night at a popular club spent with his friends and one of his teammates, Plaxico Burres was carrying an unlicensed hand held gun in his pocket. He had, of course, let the bouncers know that he had it, but convinced them it was for the purpose of protection due to his extravagant clothing and expensive jewelry. During the night, he had a few drinks, and became aware of the gun slowly slipping down his leg. He tried to keep it from falling by grabbing it, but the gun discharged and shot him in the thigh. He was charged for illegally carrying firearms and currently has a $100k bail over his head. My billboard was a simple picture of the famous Giants football player talking on the phone. My theme was justice, because I feel that in the end, the law treated him like a regular American citizen instead of like an elitist.
My billboard is about the injustice in the Sean Bell case. There was injustice because even though the cops shot Sean 50 TIMES and reloaded they still got off with a smack on the hand. This had angered many people around the United States. It had also angered Sean's fiance the most because he had died the day before their wedding which was devastating. It had also angered me too because it left me thinking: what if i were to be in a car with my friends...will the cops shoot me? and that question is still in my head today.
Hey, we did social justice billboards
The topic I got was peace. I picked the issue of peace in Iraq. I picked this topic because the war in Iraq is effecting all the people around us, and people should know that there are some other people around us who want to end it and make peace. The picture on my billboard was the word Iraq and in the letter Q there was a peace sign. The picture to me made me think that everyone wants peace in this place.
My billboard is about a young boy who died in an elevator shaft while trying to escape because the elevator stopped working. The outcome of this whole situation was that City Housing is going to spend more money on fixing elevators in public housing in new york.
I enjoyed presenting in front of the other VVP members because I like having all eyes on me SOMETIMES lol ...my nervousness turns into adrenaline and I can't help but be hyped
By the way ...I absolutely love how my Second Life character looks... simple... like me.
Today we started with a game called pass the clapping. It was pretty fun and we all had to follow he rhythm of clapping. After that we learned about different kinds of shots such as extreme close up, close up and some others. We also worked on our storyboard. Here is a picture of my Extreme long shot. This is a picture of President Bush and Israel prime minister. He came to Washington for President Bush's farewell. At that time, they talked about the relationships between Israel and Palestinian state. This two states are looking forward to work together after long years conflicts. President Bush strongly support their friendship.
In Iraq, lived a woman who was constantly being abused by her husband. She had bruises all over her body, but they were covered underneath all the Muslim dress she wore, which covered practically every inch of her skin. She requested a divorce, but the Iraqi government wouldn't give it to her, because they followed Sharia (the old, traditional Islamic laws which gave women no freedom and was very conservative). Since the Iraqi government wouldn't give it to her, she went to England. England followed through with the court case and granted her the divorce, citing that their British law was superior to Sharia. This was justice because the woman actually got the divorce, although it as against her own country's laws.
The billboard I picked came with the article; it's a picture that says "No Sharia!"
No one really follows Sharia anymore because the world isn't so theological anymore; it's more secular, ethical, and realistic.
I had no idea that Sharia was still followed. It used to be enforced in my country, Bangladesh, but it's not anymore. However, in those heavily strict Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, it's still there.
Last week, we had to present our news articles about current events. We were assigned different topics, and I was given Peace. I looked for articles pertaining to this topic and I came across protests in Thailand inside airports. I built the billboard using the in-game tools, and came up with something pretty cool.
Recently we had to create a presentation for one of four themes. Peace, no Peace, Justice and no Justice. I was selected as a part of the group of Justice.
One large event in our lives is the war in Iraq. I felt that the capture of Saddam Hussein was a great example of justice being served. He was a tyrant who killed many different people, when he was brought to a case in an Iraqi court, for war crimes.
Once I picked this theme I chose to get a picture of Saddam from his court hearing. I created a billboard in second life of the picture and I presented it.
My billboard was about justice and my topic was about a woman who seeks justice for a guy who was racing and had ended up hitting her kid. Out of that, the kid was hit and killed and the man who killed the kid has not really had a lot of jail time. In the end, the guy had died and now the woman had justice for her son.
Two weeks ago, I made my billboard on Second Life It was on lack of peace. I made a billboard using the "build" button on Second Life. A box appeared and i made the box as big as i wanted it to be. Now it was a blank billboard so i uploaded the picture that came with the article. I pasted the picture onto my billboard then i was done. I picked the topic of the Thai protesters because i heard it on the new and thought it was interesting.
To take a picture i used a medium shot because my billboards was pretty big and i wanted to see the whole picture.
RezEd Podcast, Episode 22- Frank Whiting, Dean of the University of There on the Educational Models of Using There.com
The hub for learning and virtual worlds podcast series. (WORLD) The twenty second RezEd podcast, produced by MediaSnackers with Global Kids. Frank Whiting teaches Computer Science at Shasta College, in Northern California and is also the dean of the University of There.
Show Notes:
0.00—0.24 intro
0.25—3.56 RezEd news with Rik and Amira at Global Kids (any news or events can be submitted here)
3.57—4.29 intros
4.30—5.38 Franks background
5.39—7.00 what is there.com and its differentiators
7.01—9.09 the online community
9.10—9.57 history of University of There
9.58—11.50 the potential of the University
11.51—13.06 other educational models of using there.com
13.07—14.42 future
14.43—16.07 limitations and barriers of using virtual worlds
16.08—16.36 thanks
16.37—18.04 Rik and Amira detailing the upcoming events for the RezEd community (any news or events can be submitted here)
18.05—18.13 outro
I'm going to share with you my review about my first GK Intern event.
I hosted it on Thursday, 4th of December 2008. The topic had to be Global Warming because I really do like the topic and stuff related with that. So I throught it would be cool to do something in-world about it for the TG Community to enjoy. The event was hosted at the GK Intern area on Global Kids Island, awesome place!. Before the event I managed to set up a few globes and uploaded a few pictures related to Global Warming along with additional details required for the event.
The event lasted for 1 hour and 20 minutes with many teen grid residents of the community joining in and debating about the past, present and future of Global Warming. I think in total there was around 20+ that attended the event which is great, because there was not many folks on the grid when I started. I was worried who was going to show up, but I managed to get the word out on time.
At 1:33pm SLT, the volcano went off during the event, at the abnormal weather stage. Could this be a sign or something else? lol
Here is the shedule of the Global Warming event
1pm SLT - Introduction of the Intern Event
1:10pm SLT - GK Guidelines
1:15pm SLT - Section 1: Background on Global Warming & Q&A
1:22pm SLT - Section 2: Global Warming Changes
1:30pm SLT - Section 3 - Impacts of Global Warming & Q&A
1:35pm SLT - Section 4 - The future
1:45pm SLT - Q&A
2pm SLT - Section 5 - How to make a difference
2:11pm SLT - Section 6 - How to Take Action Now
2:15pm SLT - Section 7 - Global Warming information packs & final Q&A
2:20pm SLT - The end of my event - wooot
My review
Okay, so..I managed to find and I did alot of planning for the event. As you know, I love spreading the word about events on GK, so I decided to send out Event notecards to my friends around the TG grid first. Then 8 minutes before the event started I sent out event details through all global kids groups and started group conferences, haha.
Things that worked well, was that many found it interesting on some section areas of global warming during the event. The participants brought their points across really clearly and the feedback extremely helpful and very specific. I throught people enjoyed listening to the facts and information I was sharing with them. I'm sure that people throught I was very positive and very welcoming through out the event, which is awesome.
Things that did not go so well was asking enough questions to the participants to get more views across about certain things of Global Warming. Some participants decided to drop out half through and teleport else where, so maybe I need to look into what makes teens stay longer for next time. However, I managed to get help from participants to get more people back to the event, I think that worked successfully. I was happy that people were interested still.
Areas to improve on for next time; I think I would expand the time frame out If I had to do it again, from 1hr 20mins to 2 hours to allow more time to discuss, play a game and get more teens engaged into Global Warming. My idea for next time is to use Human Barometer to see if people agree, disagree or don't know about certain statements and then they could talk about why they picked that option.
If I had to do it again, I would change a few things. I would change the time of the event to later in the day like 4pm SLT until 6pm SLT because many U.S residents are on then and more people on the grid, wooot. I also would change the event details and expand that by asking people that attend more questions about the subject. At the start I would add a fun activity section where everyone did a quick brainstorm about Global Warming and then feed back to the rest of the group, which would be great fun for all. :D
My last thoughts is that the GK Intern event went really well and everything went smoothly without many problems to worry about, hehe. I hope everyone enjoyed the event and throught it was interesting to find out new things. :)
Thanks so much for attending my event. If want a copy of the Global Warming information packs, please IM me in-world or e-mail me. :)
[SL] US Holocaust exhibit launches in SL's main grid
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably have read about Global Kids work with youth programs and the U.S. Holocaust Museum. If not, you can view past entries here.
Recently the museum launched a Second Life main grid exhibit that builds off of the Teen SL experience. In a Virtual World News article, David Klevan of the U.S. Holocaust cited:
"The project was inspired by a separate effort from the summer of 2007 with Global Kids on the Teen Grid that asked a group of high school students to conceive of an interactive space around the event."
Its me once again to talk about another one of my projects for Media Masters.
When we first did the "From 48 to 52" project I was really confused as to what it meant.
We started out by looking at a site that showed people who supported the idea of combining those who voted for President Elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain for the betterment of America, or at least that was my interpretation of what was going on.
http://www.zefrank.com/from52to48withlove/index4.html is actually the site if you wish to visit it.
For the project we had to make our own signs to add to the site though the words came out backwards.
I chose that phrase as it was the first one that popped into my head that suited my needs so i just changed it a bit.
Today, December 11, the VVP Teens went to the Public Theater. It was our first field trip of the program. It was very exciting. Our tour guide was Ashley. She showed us two theaters and a black box studio. We learned about lighting and how it is actually a hard and long process. The production of the plays are not always what they seem. Like a tree that looks natural might really be made from chicken wire and rubber. She also talked about different plays that go on in the building. By the way, did you know that the Public Theater used to be a library? I thought that was so cool.
I hope we go on more field trips!
I can't believe it's really next week! I think we've been planning this for about the same duration as a typical pregnancy.
I'm apprehensive but excited at the same time. I feel the push and pull of knowing that our group's inworld skills might not be the fastest or most savvy but I know they want to make a difference in their community and can work very well together when they put their minds to it. I hope that shines through anything else during their presentation. I know this because I see it in their eyes, their tone when they talk about what interests them in regards to the venture, and that over and over they have said they don't want others to make some of the same choices they have made in their own lives.
Some people might wonder how in the world could a venture planning take so long and what could the Icebergs be presenting about.
I think sometimes that the obstacles we faced during our planning meetings and their options to work together outside of the meetings were a kind of microcosm for the circumstances in their lives before (and during) they entered the facility they are in today.
For example:
-At times the quality of resources affected their ability to participate fully. It took several months of troubleshooting and knowledgeable technical advocates to realize that the wireless router needed to be replaced. This affected access to the island on more than one occasion. It made me think of how lack of quality resources (health care, after school activities, nurturing environment and supportive advocates) could have an effect on day to day choices made by individual members of the group.
-No matter sometimes how much the rules were followed in terms of communicating with authorities outside of those working directly with the youth for this project that the youth needed time to work together on their 'homework', it didn't always happen. This made me think how much it really does take a village to raise a child. Fortunately there was enough support and flexibility and enough advocates involved that we were able to move this far forward with the project. If there aren't that's when people fall through the cracks easier.
-Turnover rates were higher than predicted. This group faced some challenges that are not typical for most people their age to face. Oftentimes, living situations could be crowded, tense, and unpleasant or even about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This can have a direct effect on the choices someone makes in their lives on so many levels. Sometimes those choices caused members to not be able to be part of the group anymore. Other times it wasn't a choice but a circumstance beyond their control after a choice they made way before they were an Iceberg might have determined an outcome for them. Each member though, whatever their contribution was to the group and the idea made a difference. I think they helped us to understand and sharpen our own flexibility skills as well.
-Deep down I think most of us want the same goal for youth that might have made bad decisions at some point in their lives. We want them to make better ones. We want to reach in and help them see and believe in the power they have to change and make the world a better place no matter what their situation. Yet at the same time I felt circumstances working against them especially because it wasn't easy to work as a group outside of the DIDI workshop time. They are not in a place where true empowerment is typically given to them and sometimes for good reason. I don't think they are really instilled with the mindset that they can make change now-but really they don't need to wait until they are living back at home, etc. How true that is for any of us trying to make a change in our lives no matter how small or how difficult. That was/is a huge mindset to overcome.
-Sometimes I think being able to interact in a virtual world was nothing short of visiting a foreign country no matter how many times we had been there before. But guess what? They sky didn't fall. And the skills they learned through the ability to communicate and interact with people they might never have been exposed to in a million years was made so accessible. And why not? Why?
An ending and a beginning. In some ways, we've only just gotten started. As for what their venture is about? You’ll just have to stay tuned.
Today, we played a very interesting game at the beginning of the workshop. After that, we continued with the presentation.I did my presentation today. My topic was peace. I had to find an article on peace for the presentation. I found an article which was about the Israel-Palestine conflict.I was a little confused about the article; however, i remember that the Israeli prime minister wants the two states to work together. He said, "that's the only way they can solve Middle-East conflicts."
Hello guys! Today we presented our first projects we did in Second Life, where we made a wall board and put a picture up that we found and that related to our articles. Mine was about justice. So, my main topic is on "The World's Most Heinous Crime." This article is about people being killed for no reason and how no one is taking it seriously. Millions of people are dying without any real reason and it's for the people to take action to stop it from happening.
On Thursday, December 4, we had our first presentations. We presented our billboards and our articles. I was the first to go. but it was okay. I got over my fears. I think I did okay. Some people didn't go so they are going tomorrow.
[staff] US Military recruits in metaverse: send in the Peace Corps!
As Wired Blog and several new sources have reported, the US Army is starting a Second Life presence as a new form of recruitment. This virtual presence is only the latest in the US military's exploration of the metaverse, joining the US Navy Naval Underwater Warfare Center (click here to teleport) and the US Airforce MyBase sim (click here to teleport).
As a recruitment strategy, I'm not sure Second Life really hits the military's demographic as squarely as say Halo or Call of Duty. Second Life is (1) almost equally gender balanced, (2) generally an older demographic than the MMO crowd, and (3) very international, with more Europeans than Americans in SL at this point.
What I really want to know is, where is the Peace Corps, and their domestic equivalent Americorps?
It seems to me that Second Life might be an ideal venue to recruit people of all ages interested in putting their talents and skills to work on behalf of others. I could easily imagine an organization like the Peace Corps setting up a sim that described their mission, explained how their application process, and let people experience some of what it might be like to serve a year or two abroad with them.
Suppose they had a recreation of a village in Southeast Asia where your avatar could innoculate kids in a medical center. Or a Latin American city where you could help a local job center get set up. Or an African village where you could distribute malarial bed nets to villagers.
You could organize regular meet-and-greets with Peace Corps veterans to talk with interested people about their experiences and their recommendations. And even host video from actual sites showing what current volunteers are doing on the ground.
For lots of the young people that we work with at Global Kids, the military seems like the best option for them to get money for college or pursue their vocation. For us, it's important for our youth to know that there are other possibilities out there for them to gain valuable experience, travel, and earn money for college that don't involve becoming a soldier. Virtual worlds can open up their horizons beyond what they already know and help them make more informed life choices.
Over the years, I have talked with so many people of all ages who hate their jobs and
are looking for ways to do something good with their lives. They just
don't know how to get started. Second Life could help people
to figure out what steps they would need to be a "full-time volunteer"
or a nonprofit professional. Once you can envision yourself doing the
job, you can get motivated to take the actions needed to get there.
Why not use Second Life to give people a second career in public service?
Today we had to do our presentations. There were four different kinds of groups (peace, lack of peace, justice and lack of justice). My topic was peace. Everyone had different kinds of articles and all of them were very interesting. One of my favorite articles was on the attack in Hotel Taj. Over 300 people died from this attack. I didn't do my presentation today. I can't wait until Tuesday to do my presentation.
Today, VVP had a presentation on news that reflected on Peace and Justice. We took pictures from the internet and posted them up on Second Life bulletin boards! Each presenter had a different article. Everyone's stories were very mindful, it really makes you think about all the injustice in the world. Mine was about the Hotel Taj attack in Mumbai. Why would people go attack places if they don't agree on something? Why can't they talk it out?
Global Kids 2009 Winter Benefit January 14 in New York City!
Mark your calendars forGlobal Kids 2009 Winter Benefit to be held in New York City on Wednesday, January 14 from 6-9PM. We will be honoring Vincent Mai, CEO of AEA Investors and Co-Founder of the International Center for Transitional Justice, who has achieved extraordinary success as an international business leader while promoting human rights and social justice issues around the world. The event is being co-chaired by Chris Williams of Williams Capital Group, L.P., and Michael Sonnenfeldt, Chairman of MUUS & Company.
The event promises to be an exciting evening with all proceeds directly supporting Global Kids’ programs. To buy tickets or make a donation, please click here. We are offering for the first time a "young professionals" ticket for only $125 (2 tickets max per reservation.) Your contribution makes it possible to provide our leadership and academic enrichment programs to high school students throughout New York City and around the world.
If you would like to be added to our mailing list or receive further information, please contact Jessica Schulberg at (212) 226-0130, ext 128 or e-mail jschulberg-at-globalkids.org.
These next few weeks the Icebergs (aka 'the Cool Kids') DIDI team are getting ready for panel. It's exciting to see the ideas that were talked about for weeks during workshops finally get put together into a presentation that team members are excited about.
Since we're not on SL a lot, when we do have to use the program to work together, it takes a little time to feel comfortable in the space to use it as a place to express our ideas in a focused way. We have a lot of time to prepare and the team will get to go through a mock presentation next week to see what is still needed to work on.
The planning process has been a venture in itself! Stay tuned-hopefully we'll have some blogs and podcasts by the members themselves.
Today we made billboards in Second Life. It was so cool! The pictures we pasted on the billboards were pictures relating to our topic on justice and peace. There were four different groups: no peace, peace, no justice and justice. We had to find an article in recent news that related to our topic. My topic was no peace. My article was about the protesters in Thailand that wouldn't leave the country's two major commercial airports, Suvarnabhumi Airport and one other. The protesters were against Thailand's Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat and the Thai governement because the Thai people didn't trust them.
The VVP Teens will present their articles and billboards to the class.
Global Kids & Scenarios USA Present Virtual Premiere of 2008 Real Deal Youth Films
On Wednesday December 17, Scenarios USA and Global Kids will be hosting the virtual premiere of the three youth-written short films produced by Scenarios on the subject "What's the Real Deal about Masculinity?". Taking place on both the Teen Grid and Main Grid of Second Life, both youth and adult residents will be able to watch excerpts from the three films, listen to a live interview with two of the youth writers, and ask questions about the films.
DATE: December 17, 2008 TIME: 12:30pm PST / 3:30pm EST LOCATIONS : Machinima Island , Teen Second Life (teleport link)
International Justice Center, Second Life (teleport link)
View the Virtual Premiere of the movies live here:
This stream will be active during the event only.
Scenarios USA is a New York-based nonprofit that that uses writing and filmmaking to foster youth leadership, advocacy and self-expression in under-served teens. Scenarios USA asks teens to write about the issues that shape their lives for the annual "What's the REAL DEAL?" writing contest. The winning writers are partnered with some of Hollywood's finest filmmakers to transform their stories into award-winning short films. 15 million people a year watch the Scenarios USA films at film festivals, on television and in high schools nationwide. Scenarios USA believes that by valuing youth and listening to their opinions we can have an impact on promoting healthy relationships and lowering the rate of HIV, STDs and pregnancy among teens. For more information, see the Scenarios USA website.
Hey guys! Interested in knowing what we're doing in global kids? Well, recently we learned about justice and peace, and how in this world people are fighting for their rights. Some are fighting for peace. For example, some don't want any war between any countries or anyone near them, or to become enemies; many just want to live happily. Live in peace and fight for justice.
[staff] The space we learn in has everything to do with our success
Hi everyone,
For this month, I decided to post my staff reflection on video for the first time, so I can show a quick look at the room we use for the Virtual Video Project.
I had a lot of fun at VVP the last time we all met up. We were able to meet our first visitor which I enjoyed a lot because he was really funny :] It was the first time that we were able to speak to someone that worked professionally with second life. He showed us a short video clip that his team made for a television show. I was surprised because I did not know that Second Life had so many mechanics behind it. When I first got on second life I only knew what I was seeing and did not think about the intense work that was put into it. He explained all the details that are needed to make a film using second life avatars. Details that included special affects, lighting, voice narrators, scenes, props and much more. After learning more about what goes into this unique virtual world, I think that with a little more knowledge in second life I will be able to create a film of my own.
Hi! Hope this finds all of you energetic and well. Staff reflections are a great way to see new ways in which the OLP staff are thinking. Please read below for an update on current mind wanderings of the OLP staff.
Over the month of November, Rik comments on the fake New York Times that was published by an “anonymous” group, Rafi et al give thanks for being part of the GK team, Shawna looks at the power of language, Tabitha shares her thoughts about the space in which she works, Krista talks about Second Life and whether it is a game and Barry discusses the potential of a new Lego virtual world.
See below for a brief description of each staff member’s November reflection.
In his discussion on the "Fake New York Times and Visions of Change", Rik talks about how important it is to get youth to think critically and creatively about the future in order to bring about better change within their lifetimes.
Shawna questions how the language we use to explore global issues can be a tool for empowerment for young people in "A Lesson in Language".
In "The space we learn in has everything to do with our success", Tabitha shares for the first time on video about the space she works in, and talks about how the environment of the learning setting can be conducive and highly connected to the success of the programs we run.
While having dinner at a friends’ house two weeks ago, I met up with some friends that I hadn't seen since starting work here at Global Kids. After the initial "congratulations" for the job and catching up with what was new in the world, my friends and I got into a discussion about Second Life. It is funny, as before starting at Global Kids, I did not know much about Second Life, just that it rang a bell when I heard it mentioned and that it was a virtual world, but beyond that, I couldn't have told you much else. My friends scoffed at the fact that I was now “working” within Second Life, as they believed it was “just a game”.
When I started work at GK, all of my colleagues spoke about Second Life as if it was a real place, a place to partner with other organizations on new projects or programs, to make new acquaintances, to start new community initiatives, to lead in-world projects, meetings and conferences, as well as a place to meet up with old friends. As I have not spent massive amounts of time in virtual worlds, this was all new to me. I was surprised to know it wasn’t just a game; a place where people got together and played games or just chatted back and forth. Since working here I have come to see and actually benefit from going in-world, into Second Life. I have attended meetings that bring together other non-profit organizations weekly, watched documentaries, interacted with other young professionals and attended art exhibits, as well as meetings. It is amazing to see how useful and interactive Second Life can be, how virtual worlds can be used within learning paradigms as well as social ones, to create new opportunities for myself as well as others.
So when I was at the dinner, discussing Second Life with my friends and they went on about how it was only a game, I had to correct them and let them know all the cool things that can be done in Second Life, both professionally as well as personally. The discussion led me to want to learn more about the opportunities in-world, as I was not able to fully answer the questions they had regarding Second Life. Second Life definitely has more opportunities to get involved than I would have ever believed; if someone two months ago had told me that Second Life would be a professional tool for me, I would probably have given them the same look my friends gave me at the dinner – one of disbelief.
I must admit I have been feeling rather depressed about the global issues I have covered lately in workshops and wonder if it has to be this way. I understand there is no “bright side” to child soldiers or poverty or discrimination. Each time I ask, “what can you do about this?” I am reminded that taking a stand on an issue that so much of the world has chosen to ignore or doesn’t view as a priority, can be rather lonesome, difficult, and honestly a little depressing. But the good news is I do believe there is a choice in how we choose to frame an issue. I believe this because of something I found in a poem passed along to me by a co-worker.
Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet, wrote of “Of Refugees and Language”. It was her response to the televised rescue efforts of victims of Hurricane Katrina referred to as “refugees”. In her writings, she says this:
No peoples want pity above compassion
No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves
As trainers, we make a decision how to contextualize and label each issue we cover, which can strongly influence how those around us choose to engage with it. In each workshop we make a choice. With each issue, we can offer pity or we can offer compassion. We can tell the stories of slaves or we can tell the stories from fellow human beings who have become enslaved. Hammad’s writings serve as a reminder that language is a powerful tool in both taking away power from people and in creating empowerment to bring about positive change. So I have come to the conclusion that we must look through the lens of human rights from the vantage point of those who have overcome pity to instill compassion, refused to label themselves with terms of disempowerment and use their language. And my bet is that while it might feel like a much higher mountain to climb, the trip itself is both empowering and uplifting.
Review: The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning
A recent review in the online journal Educause Quarterly, written by Richard van Eck highly recommends the Ecology of Games volume, of which our own Barry Joseph has a chapter on Global Kids' work.
"The final two chapters describe gaming literacies from two different perspectives: Second Life and Global Kids. Cory Ondrejka provides a useful overview of the history and origins of virtual worlds, as well as a specific analysis of Second Life and its relation to these origins and the theories and literacies described in the other chapters in this section. Barry Joseph's chapter, "Why Johnny Can't Fly," grounds these theories and ideas in the context of youth development and presents a powerful case for games as new media that can support maturation and acculturation rather than act against it."
I can't wait til we start filming our stories!! 
Anyways, can't wait to start! 
It had also angered me too because it left me thinking: what if i were to be in a car with my friends...will the cops shoot me? and that question is still in my head today.
but it was okay. I got over my fears. I think I did okay. 
