Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

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.

Posted by Rik at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

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

Posted by Rik at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.

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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.

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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)