Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

We are excited to announce that on Monday May 18, the MacArthur Foundation will be officially launching MacArthur Island in Second Life with a public forum featuring Foundation President Jonathan Fanton and co-creator of Second Life, Cory Ondrejka. Ondrejka and Fanton will be discussing the future of virtual worlds and philanthropy, and then taking questions from the virtual audience. An informal reception will follow.

Virtual world / web simulcast services provided by our friends at Treet.tv.

Head to the Foundations sim (click here to teleport.) on May 18 to participate!

Continue reading "Join Jonathan Fanton and Cory Ondrejka on MacArthur Island on Monday May 18" »

Posted by Rik at 2:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, February 2, Global Kids held a special fireside chat on the Teen Grid of Second Life focused on HIV/AIDS in Africa. The workshop began with Rafi leading a small group of teens in an exercise to have them think about the links between poverty and HIV/AIDS, and the role of Western governments in the fight against AIDS. Then we streamed into Second Life a live phone conversation with Victoria, a teenager in Uganda whose life has been particularly affected by HIV/AIDS.

Victoria spoke about her family background, how she was able to attend the most elite school in Uganda and her plans for university. Victoria then discussed about how the Ugandan government and civil society have been dealing with a recent upsurge in HIV cases, using a variety of media and strategies. Click play on the media player above to listen to our conversation with her.

To help young Ugandans like Victoria to go to school and find a better future, please see http://leaduganda.org.

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Continue reading "OLP's 2008 Year End Review" »

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We had a very successful Second Life conference on education in virtual worlds yesterday.  This was the first virtual conference sponsored by RezEd.org, the social network for virtual world educators. The RezEd conference featured a panel discussion with educators working in Second Life, Google Lively and Dizzywood; a "birds of a feather" breakout session; and a fun social mixer to close out the evening. With 60+ avatars from a range of institutions and backgrounds, this was a perfect example of how virtual worlds can enable networking, collaboration, and learning in an immersive and ludic environment.

Update November 24: One of our speakers Ryan Clemmens tells us that he was informed 30 minutes prior to speaking at the RezEd conference on November 17 that Google was closing the Lively virtual world at the end of the year. Thus, this was probably the last public address on Google Lively before it was publicly announced on November 19 that it was shutting its virtual doors.

Continue reading "[rezed] RezEd's first virtual world education conference a success!" »

Posted by Rik at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday November 17, Global Kids invites you to "Real World Impact From the Virtual World" in Second Life. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the USC Network Culture Project and Global Kids invite you to a sneak preview of a new Second Life sim that features MacArthur programs and grantees. The event will be held on November 17, 2008 from 1-5pm PST.

Join us to learn about how groups use virtual spaces like Second Life to build real opportunities -- preserving native peoples' cultures, creating accessible spaces for people with disabilities, helping obese people make healthy life choices and teaching underprivileged youth about paleontology and science.

This interactive series of events will take place on Foundations Sim (click here to teleport) and the neighboring archipelago that includes the Network Culture Project, Justice Commons (click here to teleport ) and Aloft Nonprofit Commons (click here to teleport).

The full schedule follows...

Continue reading "Sneak Preview of MacArthur Foundation's new Second Life island on November 17" »

Posted by Rik at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The screenshot here is kind of hard to parse so let me describe it. A young person (represented by the green furry) in Teen Second Life is composing a text message to send to another teen in Uganda that she will recieve on her cell phone as an SMS message.  Meanwhile my avatar (the purple robot) sits atop the chat history represented by floating text and blue bubbles that rise higher as each new message is sent.  This remarkable exchange from the virtual world to a regular cell phone is made possible by the grey device behind the bubbles, a tool we call "Switchboard."

A little background after the jump...

Continue reading "Crossing the Metaversal Divide: Second Life teens exchange text messages with Ugandan girl on her cell phone" »

Posted by Rik at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I helped organize a pretty successful mixed-reality Global Kids event, featuring Dr. Francis Deng, the UN Special Representative on Genocide, speaking about Darfur and the UN's response to situations like these. The Online Leadership Program of Global Kids, which I'm a part of, is making concerted efforts to coordinate our work more closely with other Global Kids' programs that focus on New York teens.  While Second Lifers know about Global Kids as being innovators in virtual world education, our main work is face-to-face with thousands of real world teens in 25 schools in the wider New York City area.

My colleague Shawna and I developed a quick-and-dirty way of taking a program organized by the Global Kids Summer Institute at the Council on Foreign Relations and bring it into Second Life and Teen Second Life. 

Continue reading "[staff] Streaming Diplomats: the challenges of working with real and virtual teens and adults" »

Posted by Rik at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Kids' Deconstructing Darfur project culminated with the Torch Relay for Darfur that was conceptualized, created, and run by the members of Deconstructing Darfur. After eight workshops addressing the situation in Darfur and looking at activism in virtual and real world communities, the teens put their knowledge into action to raise awareness about Sudan's connection to China in light of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing.

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Deconstructing Darfur Culminates with Torch Relay for Darfur" »

Posted by Shawna at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Workshop 7

It is hard to believe we are in our last week of Deconstructing Darfur. This workshop was one of the last opportunities as a group to put together all the elements of our upcoming event to raise awareness and funds, the Torch Relay for Darfur. The team used this time to brainstorm missing parts and roles that need to be created before the event on Friday, June 13. I continue to be impressed on the willingness of all members of Deconstructing Darfur to take on anything and everything that needs to get done. This has often meant stepping out of their comfort zones and testing out new skills as they become builders or graphic designers to help make this event reality. Once again, this confirms the tremendous amount of talent that can be found within the TSL community and youth in general.

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Deconstructing Darfur Week 4 Wrap-Up" »

Posted by Shawna at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Workshop 5

The third week of "Deconstructing Darfur" took our exploration of activism on Darfur to a much deeper level. The "Deconstructing Darfur" team was joined by Catherine Wagner of the Save Darfur Coalition and Mohsin Mohi-Ud Din of Human Rights First to share their work and experiences in taking action to help the people of Sudan.

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Deconstructing Darfur Week 3 Wrap-Up" »

Posted by Shawna at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Workshop 3

During Week 2 of "Deconstructing Darfur", we shifted our focus to look at activism and how our own beliefs play a role in our involvement before creating our own action project. We started our third meeting by looking at how we view our own moral obligations and how they impact our actions. As a group we read two different scenarios. The first scenario involves a man injured by a car right in front of you. In the second scenario, you receive a letter asking for a donation to help save dying children. For each situation, we silently gave ourselves a moral grade for not acting in that situation. The majority of the group gave themselves much lower grades for not acting in the scenario where the man was hit by the car. From here, we began to look at why this was. We weighed out the factors in each situation, who was innocent, what was the worst consequence, and how many people were harmed or helped. As it turned out, the second scenario had much harsher consequences and our contribution would help many more people, so we asked ourselves why was our moral judgment so off? We discussed and debated how factors such as proximity both physical and social, the potential to fully solve the problem, and urgency all affected what we saw as moral obligations. The aim of this activity was to make the teens aware of how their own morals and those of their peers will influence both the development and the reactions to their action project.

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Deconstructing Darfur Week 2 Wrap-Up" »

Posted by Shawna at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Deconstructing Darfur” is off to a great start. After a long and very difficult decision to pick ten teens out of 40-some applications, the workshops could begin! With just two of the eight workshops complete, I am really enjoying getting to know the members of “Deconstructing Darfur” who have shown so much enthusiasm and openness with one another and to learning about a topic such as Darfur and genocide, that can be very draining and tough to understand.

Each week the teens meet inside a tent, based off of photos of where classes are held inside a refugee camp in Darfur or Chad. The tent is complete with a dirt floor and little mats for each participant to sit on. As the weeks progress, the tent will change thanks to the help of two great teen builders. As we progress and gain a deeper understanding of what positive change might look like to a fellow teen living in Darfur, the tent will change to symbolize our understanding of reasonable, constructive development.

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Deconstructing Darfur Week 1 Wrap-Up" »

Posted by Shawna at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our partners at the USC Network Culture Project are opening today a Community Challenge entitled Second Life and the Public Good, slated to begin Tuesday, May 6th from International Island (teleport slurl). A special opening session will be held on May 6, 2008 at 11AM with Cory Ondrejka, former CTO of Linden Lab and current visiting professor at USC.
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We hope you will join us Tuesday, May 6 at 11:00 am PST as we consider the potential impact of virtual worlds like Second Life to address real world issues and better the public good of commuities around the world. This conversation will launch a community challenge to create projects (and fund the top three as voted by the community) that best address critical issues.

Continue reading "USC Network Culture Project announces Second Life Community Challenge Today" »

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

After taking a bit of a break from my event I hosted as a Global kids intern, I was asked to help out with a new project for GK. After being given a bit information on the Visions of Global Art Contest, it seemed interesting, and something I could participate in helping with . Right from the start, I began to compile a list of things essential to promoting and getting the contest started. Of the first tasks were posting in the forms/event list, and creating a poster that would reach out to teen residents to participate. After doing a little bit of thinking for the idea of the poster, I was soon finished it, and it was ready to be put up and displayed around Global Kids Island. Once the posters were placed, events listing of the Global justice workshops and the announcing of the winners went up.

Continue reading "[tsl/intern] Giving a helping hand.... for justice!" »

Posted by Mat Brocco - TSL Intern at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The past month has brought about many new visions of global justice here at Global Kids. The Visions of Global Justice workshops and art contest celebrated the launch of the International Justice Center and was a great opportunity to explore in Second Life what international justice means to teens around the world. Click the link for the complete summary and photos!

Continue reading "[tsl/public good] Visions of Global Justice Teen Art Contest" »

Posted by Shawna at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)