Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

Last Spring, we engaged in an experiment with Common Sense Media and Harvard's Goodplay Project in hopes that we could come to understand key questions of how youth and adults relate to life online through a series of cross-generational online dialogues. The Focus Dialogues, which had over 250 participants from around the world making over 2,500 posts, highlighted some important ways that the two groups are thinking about ethical dimensions of digitally mediated social participation. We're now pleased to release Meeting of Minds [pdf], a report on the dialogues that shares key findings that emerged.

The findings of the report offer some important perspectives for parents and educators about how youth are thinking about these issues. For instance, teens often relate to ethically challenging situations online from a place of concern about repercussions for themselves, rather than from concern about the implications of their actions for larger communities. Adults, on the other hand, spoke more about responsibility to others and to communities when discussing digital dilemmas. Whereas a teen who makes a fake profile page about her teacher might think it’s funny, adults are more likely to urge consideration of how such an act might hurt or damage the teacher's reputation.

We're hoping that the report can serve to some degree as a call to action for adults to engage with teens and help guide them so that they think more about how their actions might positively or negatively affect others, not just themselves, in an online world where actions can have long lasting and far reaching effects.

Posted by Rafi Santo at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week brings the exciting release of two papers that were written based on findings during the 2007 Second Life Community Convention in both the education and non-profit focused panels. They were authored by two prominent SL community members in both fields and feature numerous references, quotes and work being done by various educators, virtual world professionals and non-profits within Second Life and other related spheres.

We are proud of the papers and welcome you to download them, share with your colleagues and leave comments.

Support for these reports was provided by the Digital Media and Learning Initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We thank them and all who helped contribute in some way to the publishing of these documents.

The first paper in the Global Kids Series on Virtual Worlds discusses common themes, methodology and best practices in education in virtual worlds and concludes with recommendations.

Perhaps reflecting the unique and collaborative characteristics of the virtual platform itself, the Second Life educational community has distinguished itself as being remarkably collegial and generous in sharing both knowledge and resources with colleagues across boundaries that have traditionally not been crossed. Rather than adopting a silo mentality of research and practice, many educators routinely construct knowledge and discover best practices with colleagues in different disciplines, schools, institutions and countries. A higher education instructor in California may advise a middle school teacher in Saudi Arabia. An independent e-learning professional may offer instructional space to a virtually landless university professor.

This collaborative spirit is reflected in the principles and best practices gleaned from the Education Track at the recent Second Life Community Conference held in Chicago, Illinois in August 2007. A representative cross-section of Teen, Higher Education, Corporate and Government presentations reflected both common instructional strategies in maximizing a virtual world environment, as well as examples of tailoring that environment to best help specific learning populations.

Download the paper here.

Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life – Fall 2007
prepared by Rik Panganiban

The second paper in the series includes key recommendations for non-profits on education, outreach, collaboration, fundraising and advocacy.

Well-heeled patrons sip martinis while bidding on shimmering gowns to raise funds for cancer research. A humanitarian aid worker just back from Sudan talks about the plight of Sudanese refugees to an international audience. Regulars at a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting sit in a loose circle, helping each other through another day of sobriety. Teenagers are creating sets, costumes and lighting to shoot an educational video about child soldiers in Uganda. Pretty normal non-profit activities – if not for the fact that all of these events took place in the virtual world of Second Life.

This report is a preliminary examination of some of the best practices of non-profits active in Second Life, inspired by a series of discussions that took place during the “nonprofit track” at the Second Life Community Convention in August 2007 in Chicago. This past year Second Life has become a testing ground for exploring the possibilities of using virtual worlds for the social good. Given the fairly recent entry of many non-profits into Second Life – many non-profit offices are under one year old – these findings and recommendations are very much subject to revision. Indeed, we consider this just the beginning of a much longer conversation about what is the role of civil society, philanthropy, and the public sector writ large in the virtual world.

Download the paper here.

Continue reading "[Conf] Announcing release of two papers in GK Series on Virtual Worlds" »

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

In April of 2007, Global Kids held the first round of FOCUS: Teen Voices on Digital Media and Society, a series of online dialogues in which teens from around the globe gathered to discuss the effects that digital media had in their lives and in the world.

We're pleased to release an independent report on FOCUS which gives an overview of the project and its participants, and, most importantly, elucidates on the many themes which emerged from the youth voices in the dialogues.

Download the report.

Read the full archives of FOCUS.

Posted by Rafi Santo at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

TakingITGlobal recently posted to their site up a curriculum focused around Ayiti: The Cost of Life. The site has a series of lesson plans that relate to the game and the challenges that are faced daily in Haiti.

From their site:

Working with youth leaders at South Shore High School, Global Kids and Gamelab have developed Ayiti, a role-playing video game in which the player assumes the roles of family members living in rural Haiti. Over the course of the game, the player must choose among and balance various goals, such as achieving education, making money, staying healthy, and maintaining happiness while encountering unexpected events. The player must make many decisions that contribute to or detract from achieving his or her chosen goals.

TakingITGlobal is proud to partner with Global Kids to offer Ayiti on TIGed, a thematic classroom that connects the Ayiti game to a virtual classroom toolset, allowing educators to guide their students through a rich, interactive learning experience that includes Ayiti gameplay!

View the lesson plans and classroom activities for TIGed + Ayiti below:
Play Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Class Discussion About Playing Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Reflections on Playing Ayiti: The Cost of Life

Take Action Haiti

Children of Haiti Summit

Posted by joyce at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Global Kids developed two workshops in association with our game Ayiti: The Cost of Life.

The first workshop is designed as a tool for helping youth process their experience after playing the game. The second workshop can be conducted either before playing the game, as a way to introduce students to the game’s issues, or after playing the game, as a way to help them better understand the links between poverty and access to education. Both workshops offer a number of actions youth can take to make a difference in the real world.

Materials:

Today I missed my bus for school, so I went to school little late. As I was arriving, I got a phone call from my classmate who said our teacher was absent. So I went to deli, got breakfast and walked to school slowly. In my third period class, my friend Jenny sent me a text message saying. "yo d ms.v isn here wanna go out after 6". As I was replying to her message my English teacher caught me. Thanks to my PDA phone, I turned on the dictionary and said I was looking for some word I didn’t know. My teacher began to complain about the new technology students carry and that they are ruining students.

My teacher is in her early forties, and she said when she was a high school student she didn't have a cellular phone, not even beeper. When she had homework that required research, she had to go to library, and check the entire card catalog to find the book she needed. She didn't have digital cable like we do with hundreds of channel. She didn't have Internet like we do now. The only media that was available in her day were television, radio, and newspaper. "Why do you need all that stuff for?’ she asked. “It's ruining teenagers."

Continue reading "[DMEC] Essay Finalist: Untitled Essay by Dayhe H." »

Posted by joyce at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)