 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Welcome to the blog for Global Kids' Online Leadership Program. Scroll below for featured entries.
 |
Want to know how your vote for GK can make a difference? Read about the life-changing experience of GK alumna Joliz Cedeño, featured recently on the Huffington Post.
Just a click, that's all we ask.
LIBRARIES AND COMMUNITY CENTERS USE GAMES TO INSPIRE YOUTH TO TAKE ACTION
Report Finds Program Effectively Trains Educators To Teach Game Design
Selen Turkay, a doctoral student in the Instructional Technology and Media program at Teachers College, Columbia University, recently prepared an independent evaluation of Global Kids’ Playing For Keeps Capacity Building Program, which trains educators to combine games and social issues in their work with youth.
The findings, based on 45 interviews with educators from the New York public libraries and Boston-area housing projects, revealed that Global Kids successfully prepared youth workers to inspire and guide teens to learn and create game prototypes about social and global issues.
Continue reading "[p4k] Report Finds Program Effectively Trains Educators To Teach Game Design" »
The MacArthur Foundation recently published a series of articles to the "Behind the Research" section of their Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning site which highlighted some of our programs both past and upcoming.
Below you can read the article entitled "Learning at the Edge: Transforming After-School Spaces into Learning Networks" by Sarah Jackson, which brings up some of the focus of the newly launched Edge Project.
Behind the Research: Learning at the Edge: Transforming After-School Spaces into Learning NetworksGlobal Kids takes digital tools to kids’ hang out spaces to help institutions like museums adapt to a changing learning landscape and attract youth.
As schools still struggle to integrate web 2.0 technologies, kids are going online, texting and playing games on their own time.
How can these new media tools be used for learning outside of school?
As scientist and educator John Seeley Brown says: “To transform the core, start at the edge.”
The edge, in this case, are places kids go between school and home: hang-out spaces, after-school programs, libraries, museums. Like schools, some of these institutions also need help adapting to new media. With its new Edge Project, Global Kids is introducing some of these spaces to new learning tools. The New York City-based after-school program will provide institutions with practical models and training sessions on using virtual worlds, games and social media for learning.
Hi! This is Nafiza Akter, and I was one of the youth attending the Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age Forum. This forum was put together, as far as my understanding goes, to look at how technology could be used and incorporated into the current educational system for the benefit of the students. The nine youth that attended, organized by Global Kids, all helped to incorporate actual youth voices into the forum since the entire event was based around how technology could be used in the educational system that we have been receiving and experiencing. The event was held at the Googleplex, which, as you can imagine, was more reason to why no one would want to miss an opportunity to attend this event.
Shonette and I arrive at the GooglePlex
The Breakthrough Learning Forum wasn't at all what I expected it to be. First of all, I was under the impression I would see Google—but I didn't even get a tour! It's so funny because I was in a couple of the buildings that were a part of Google, but I didn't really get to see it as an entirety (this was me being dramatic). However, I got to experience Google. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Although I didn't get the whole "wow" factor tour of the Googleplex, I did get to see what their employees are like when they are just hanging out with one another, or hard at work—and I also got a chance to see Sergey Brin speak. Most importantly (I think for everyone who attended) we got to experience the snacks at Google—I say this because the entire mass of snacks laid out in the morning were just about poof—gone by around 4PM. I have to admit though, the Pocky were very tempting. I just can't help but remember Shonette constantly telling herself "Cheese is good for you" and "Chocolate is good for you" (how often do you see a treasure chest filled with chocolate coins?). You would wonder why in the world Google would be promoting morbid obesity, after all, I'm sure somewhere out there are statistics that find a correlation between being fit and working better...but then you realize the snacks are definitely balanced out with all the sports, activities, and the masses of people that bike to work. Anyway, the most impressive thing at the Googleplex for me was the T-rex that was surrounded by flamingoes!
Shonette and I with the T-Rex!
Continue reading "[conf/teens] The Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age Forum" »
In August, Global Kids graduated its first cohort of nonprofit staffers who participated in the Virtual World Capacity Building Program, a four-week introduction to virtual worlds and their applications for civic and cultural institutions. These four organizations -- the Vera Institute of Justice, the Adler Planetarium, Architreasures, and the National Writing Project -- had almost no experience with virtual worlds prior to the program, but by the end of the four-week course were able to speak cogently and insightfully about how these digital tools fit into their larger institutional missions. Over the course of the four-weeks, these staffers explored a number of different virtual worlds, created avatars for themselves, learned how to build 3d objects and bring in multimedia resources, and engaged in in-depth conversations about the strengths and challenges of working with these new media tools. (You can see a report about this first Virtual Roundtable.)
Over this next year, Global Kids will work with 15-20 more civic and cultural institutions to expose them to the possibilities of virtual worlds for their work. This initiative grew out of Global Kids ad hoc work with other public institutions over the years -- including UNICEF, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Youth Leadership Council -- helping them to think strategically about synthetic worlds and create educational projects in these spaces. Through the support of the MacArthur Foundation, we are able to formalize this orientation to virtual worlds, and scale up our reach to more nonprofit organizations curious about how to use these digital tools.
Continue reading "Virtual World Capacity Building Program" »
“To transform the core, start at the edge.” -- John Hagel and John Seely Brown
The Edge Project is part of Global Kids recent support from the MacArthur Foundation to expand the capacity of civic and cultural institutions to use new media as innovative educational platforms that engage youth in learning and promote youth civic participation. More specifically, the Edge Project is interested in civic and cultural institutions bringing cutting edge digital media into their youth educational programs. It is equally interested in where this type of programming - due to technology, its pedagogical implications or both - is a disruptive force challenging the educators and/or the institutional cultural to work on the edge of their comfort level. There is a balancing act they must undertake, being receptive to how new media challenges their current educational culture and practice while, in turn, challenging the educational potential of new media through interacting with that very culture and practice. At the end of the day, we want to better understand the following questions: how do institutions find their balance working on this edge and do different types of institutions respond in different ways?
Working from a strength-based youth development model, Global Kids' programs are designed not to address deficiencies but to build the capacities of young people. As such, we privilege the existing skills, knowledge and dispositions youth bring into a program. What we may do less successfully, however, is address and help youth think about where they are developing these strengths when outside our programs. They may navigate their distributed learning networks, moving from home, to school, to after school program, to personal media, and to home once again, without ever becoming aware of how any of these nodes connects to the others. While the Edge Project focuses on learning institutions, at the same time we want to look at similar issues from a youth frame of reference. How do young people understand and situate themselves within their individual learning ecology? Where do they view themselves as directing their learning and where as mere subjects to forces beyond their control?
Finally, bringing the frameworks together, we want to better understand how an educational program using new media can afford youth new opportunities to leverage their learning from other spheres. Is there something specific to new media tools, or the pedagogies they engender, that create more flexibility and openness for youth to bring in existing knowledge and practices? How can these forms of participatory learning programs support youth to strategically shape and navigate their learning network? Finally, how can civic and cultural institutions leverage and understand how youth learn across their personal ecology and how does that shape their own understanding of their institution's role within this network?
“Learning simply looks different today. Digital media are not only changing how young people are accessing and consuming new knowledge, but they are extending the classroom to more informal and unconventional spaces, such as libraries, museums and even online communities. These institutions need to adapt to this new environment.” -- MacArthur Vice President Julia Stasch.
This Fall, Global Kids received support from the MacArthur Foundation to expand the capacity of civic and cultural institutions to use virtual worlds, as well as other emerging forms of digital media like digital games and social media, as innovative educational platforms that engage youth in learning and promote youth civic participation.
Through this grant, over the next two years, Global Kids will undertake three models for capacity building:
The Edge Project
Pilot eight short-term demonstration projects that engage youth and focus GK's capacity-building efforts with established civic and cultural institutional partners including the New York Public Library, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Field Museum, Jail North, and MOUSE Squad.
Virtual World Capacity Building Program
Facilitate a seasonal series of remote trainings in the use of virtual worlds provided to a group of 15-20 civic and cultural institutions, such as Facing History and the International Center for Transitional Justice.
General Capacity Building
Support the general public to learn more about virtual worlds and learning through RezEd.org, about Global Kids lessons and projects in development at olp.GlobalKids.org, and about the work within this grant at EdgeProject.org.
This project is informed by the work and ideas of a wide range of MacArthur grantees whose work we have closely followed over the years and, occasionally, had the honor of being part of: James Paul Gee (games-based learning, 21st Century Assessment, worked examples), Henry Jenkins (new media literacies, participatory learning), Mimi Ito ("hanging out, messing around, and geeking out"), the GoodPlay Project (youth and ethics online), and Lance Bennet (engaged citizenship).
We hope that Global Kids' unique experience and extensive work in developing youth-focused digital media programs will inform the field with practical models for organizations interested in how youth learn with and through digital media. We look forward to exploring the challenges of applying the academic to the practical, sharing each step along the way as we assess the impact of our short-term trainings and the demonstration projects on the civic and cultural institutions that are reached.
Read more about the Edge Project and the Virtual World Capacity Building Program in the two related blog entries.
With Halloween behind us, OLP staff are off to a running start. Read what we have been doing over the past month, starting with a quick overview: Rik looks at the challenges of digital tools for newbies, Barry reflects on various GK alternative assessment tools, Krista writes about her past year working at GK and Amira talks about a new GK initiative working with U.S. jails.
Read the reflections below for a more in-depth description:
As always, thanks for reading!
Below is an article by Barry Joseph originally posted on the Breakthrough Learning In a Digital Age site entitled "Using Alternative Assessment Models to Empower Youth-directed Learning." It focuses around several assessment models used in our programs, along with example outcomes from one of our youth. It also announces our newly created, MacArthur Foundation funded, Global Kids Edge Project.
Read more below or the full entry and comments here.
Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to her MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she'll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often as she can. While she misses television and movies, she says she just can't find the time.This describes what we can call Tashawna's distributed learning network, the most important places in her life where learning occurs. Not just at home, school and church but also through digital media, like MP3s, SMS and social networks, and at youth-serving institutions, like Global Kids and FIERCE. Some are places that require her presence, like school, while others are opt-in, like MySpace. But the learning she gathers across the nodes in her network are preparing her to succeed in the classrooms, workplaces, and civic arenas of the 21st Century.
And Tashawna is not alone. In part due to the changes in education, in part due to the affects of digital media, youth have a wide array of options for learning knowledge and developing skills. But how many youth feel in charge of their networks, or are even aware they exist as an interconnected whole? How do they learn to synthesize what they learn and communicate it to future employers and college admission staff who won't learn of their strengths on most school transcripts?
Continue reading "Using Alternative Assessment Models to Empower Youth-directed Learning" »
Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to her MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she'll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often as she can. While she misses television and movies, she says she just can't find the time.
This describes what we can call Tashawna's distributed learning network, the most important places in her life where learning occurs. Not just at home, school and church but also through digital media, like MP3s, SMS and social networks, and at youth-serving institutions, like Global Kids and FIERCE. Some are places that require her presence, like school, while others are opt-in, like MySpace. But the learning she gathers across the nodes in her network are preparing her to succeed in the classrooms, workplaces, and civic arenas of the 21st Century.
And Tashawna is not alone. In part due to the changes in education, in part due to the affects of digital media, youth have a wide array of options for learning knowledge and developing skills. But how many youth feel in charge of their networks, or are even aware they exist as an interconnected whole? How do they learn to synthesize what they learn and communicate it to future employers and college admission staff who won't learn of their strengths on most school transcripts?
Continue reading "[staff] Using Alternative Assessment Models to Empower Youth-directed Learning" »
If you will be in the Philadelphia area on November 18th, make sure to register for the following event. Global Kids will also be simulcasting this event online and into Second Life for those not able to attend in person, to be able to participate. Stay tuned for more information on this. Event details and registration link below.
Please join Philadelphia educators, parents, researchers, students, and community members for a free public forum entitled The Power of Youth Voice: What Kids Learn When They Create With Digital Media. This event will take place Wednesday, November 18, 2009, from 6pm-8pm at The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and will also be available online.
The goal of the event is to open discussion in the Philadelphia area with a range of interested community members about how young people can and do learn from digital media. From 6pm-7pm, there will be a reception during which examples of digital work done by young people in and outside of school are on display. From 7pm-8pm, there will be a panel on this topic with some of the national leaders in the field, followed by a question and answer session.
Please join us:
Where: The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia or online
When: Wednesday, November 18 from 6pm-8pm, online from 7pm-8pm
Who: This event is free and open to the public, we encourage anyone who is interested in how digital media can be used for learning to attend
For more information and to register to attend either in person or online, please visit: http://www.woodrow.org/youthvoice.
This event is hosted by The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in coordination with The National Writing Project, and is supported by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Next week, Global Kids will be leading a team of youth leaders to a landmark event in the world of digital learning. The event, titled Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, is being organized by the Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Common Sense Media and Google and will be held at the GooglePlex on October 27th and 28th. It's aimed at bringing attention to new forms of learning facilitated by technology, and will be attended by policymakers, industry leaders, education practitioners and researchers, and, of course, by digital youth. The youth team will consist of kids from Global Kids, the Bay Area Video Coalition and MOUSE, and will aim to bring in a youth voice to the forum in a variety of ways. We're really excited that the organizers put a priority on making sure actual teens were a part of this important conversation, as so often they aren't.
Leading up to the event, our Online Program's Director, Barry Joseph, has contributed to the Breakthrough Learning Blog with a post about using alternative assessment models to empower youth directed learning. We're excited about the post here at GK, as it's one of the first times we've articulated some of our recent efforts using digital transcripts, digital portfolios, and distributed learning maps as methods of alternative assessment that help youth to think critically about their learning across multiple spaces. Definitely check it out and comment!
We're also excited to release at the event our report, Meeting of Minds: Cross-Generational Dialogue on the Ethics of Digital Life, which highlights findings from the Focus Dialogues, held last Fall, which brought together parents, teachers and teens to talk about ethics online. We look forward to releasing the report more widely in the coming weeks.
For those that won't be at the event, you can watch the webcast on both the opening and main day and submit questions via Google Moderator.
This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak to around 70 program officers from a wide variety of foundations at the Grantmakers in the Arts pre-conference entitled "New Media and the Arts: A Force for Change." I had fifteen minutes to present on the "new tools" panel, using GK's own work as case studies.
Most would choose one or two and go deep. But if you know me, no way. I took on gaming, virtual worlds AND social media - how can I help it? - giving examples from each.
The presentation is below:
The presentation above was created in Prezi, a new presentation program that, like Keynote, improves upon Powerpoint but in reality is a real game changer. I like to compare Powerpoint and Keynote by saying, "You have to work hard to make something look good in Powerpoint. In Keynote, you have to work hard to make it look bad." In reality, both are the same concept - presentations are mostly text, with some images and videos, and snazzy animations - presented as slides, one order after another.
Prezi is something else entirely. There are no slides in Prezi. No linear narrative of one box with bulleted-text after another. Rather, imagine drawing out your ENTIRE presentation on one unbounded sheet of paper, and then controlling how the camera moves around it. Now imagine that you are not only moving back and forth on the X axix and up and down on the Y axis, but also forward and back on the Z axis. That's right - you can put your entire presentation within the dot on the "i" in your title. The camera tilts as well as it moves from one section of the presentation to another.
As a result, you end up with something heavy on images rather than text, forcing you to actually say what you want to say rather than read it off the slide, and provides the viewer with a very dynamic (too dynamic and it will make people nauseous!) experience.
But Prezi is even more than just that. It is social media itself. While you can download your presentation and show it offline, it is free to use, created through their web site, and sharable (and editable) with others. Perfect social media. So today I was able to use social media as a vehicle for talking about social media.
Now, here's what I did NOT talk about today and why I want to be giving Prezi a big up right now. I finished the Prezi this past Friday. All worked well online. But when I downloaded it for offline viewing, it still played all four of the videos - but at the same time!
I immediately went to their support site and learned that I could post my concern to an open forum. Oh, whoopee! How many times had I done that to never get a response. But this time, that evening, the CTO of Prezi wrote back. He told me he would fix it the next day. In fact, he promised me it would be fixed by the presentation. He worked on it Saturday, then Sunday, until it worked. And it did. Thank you Prezi!
And thank you for offering another example of the true social behind social media.
UPDATE
Ian David Moss wrote a nice overview of the entire day. Below is the excerpt on my presentation:
I will tell you one thing: media people know how to put together a snazzy presentation. This observation was driven home to me in particular by Barry Joseph’s dizzying “prezi” for Global Kids, which can be downloaded here. Global Kids invests in several strategies for engaging youth in new media. First, it brings video games (and in particular, video game design) into the classroom using tools such as Scratch. Did you know that 99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games at this point? Second, Global Kids leverages virtual worlds such as Second Life to engage kids in activities like making short movies. Finally, the organization treats social media like a Boy Scouts activity, allowing youth to earn “badges” in areas such as “judgment,” “negotiation,” and “distributed cognition.” All in all, a fascinating presentation.
In a recent Spotlight on MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning blog, entitled "Navigating Identity—Reimagining Oneself Online", the idea is discussed of online identity being a fluid thing that youth and others, must learn to manage and navigate through their digital world.
They cite our own Rik Panganiban, on the DIDI program and one of the youth ventures that took place with incarcerated youth.
“It was an ‘aha’ moment for us,” Panganiban says, a coordinator for RezEd, a hub for researchers and practitioners. RezEd is a project of Global Kids funded by MacArthur. “Those young people who have restrictions in their real lives saw the virtual world as liberating. They saw they had something to offer other kids because of their own experiences. Instead of feeling like second-class citizens, they realized they could use that experience to help other kids and say, ‘This is a choice you don’t want to make.’”“In the virtual world, they were not kids in jail,” Panganiban says.
Instead, they could create powerful avatars for themselves, such as robots, that gave them the gravitas to “explore ideas about how to help others not get into their situation,” he says.
Digital Media and Learning, a video featuring Global Kids teen Lucky was featured recently on the MacArthur Foundations Spotlight blog.
From the video description:
Digital media are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life, and these changes have profound implications for learning. Researchers and practitioners supported through MacArthur's digital media and learning initiative are exploring how digital media can help extend the classroom to more informal and unconventional spaces, such as libraries, museums and even online communities.Visit digitallearning.macfound.org.
