Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

• 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
  

In January, Global Kids released two white papers on education and non-profit activities in virtual worlds, based on findings from the 2007 Second Life Community Convention. "Reports from the Field: Second Life Community Convention 2007 Education Track Summary" was prepared by California educator Cathy Arreguin, while "Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life" was authored by Rik Panganiban.

• Public Appearances and Writing
  

Global Kids Online Leadership Program staff spoke and wrote about our work, reaching thousands of people over 2008. We addressed more than 3,500 people at more than 50 events over the course of the year, appearing both in person and virtually. In September, Barry Joseph gave a keynote address at the Second Life Community Convention and the SLED Community Conference on "Why Second Life Can't Tip: The Power and Perils of Living la Vida Ludic." In addition, we published a range of reports online and in print, notably Barry Joseph's chapter on "Why Johnny Can't Fly: Treating Games as a Form of Youth Media Within a Youth Development Framework" as part of MacArthur Foundation series on Digital Media and Learning.

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.