Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

GK's own youth leader Nafiza was chosen to be part of Edutopia's online Youth Portraits series, in which they feature the digital worlds of various teens.

Digital Youth Portrait: Nafiza

Edutopia's portrait includes an interview of Nafiza along with short video pieces on her, her work in GK's OLP programs and what it is like to have digital media play a close relationship in her day to day life.

There are also sections, within Edutopia's feature on Nafiza, where other videos spotlight using digital media to learn world affairs and highlight the work Nafiza and other youth leaders put in within the VVP program to produce the 2007 and 2008 program short films "A Child's War" and "Race to Equality".

Learning World Affairs Through Digital Media

To visit Edutopia's full youth profile on Nafiza, click here.

Posted by joyce at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent entry from Arwyn Quandry on the blog Transmissions from TSL, focuses on TSL Relay for Life and mentions Global Kids donating the sim for this and all the wonderful organizational efforts by the teen Lucky Figtree who has been working with GK for the past few years.

The mastermind behind this whole event is the talented Lucky Figtree, a longtime GK helper and teen activist who has been running TG RFL events for the past three years. She also speaks at conferences both in-world and first life with Global Kids. On the Relay for Life, she said, “With Relay for Life on the Teen Grid, I hope to give teens all the opportunity in the world to make a difference. Too often the teen grid is regarded as a waste of time and space, and I want to change that and show the teens just how much good they can do when they come together. Our plan is to educate and train in hopes that when it’s time for these teens to transfer, they’ll take part in the main grid relay and continue to celebrate, remember and fight back.” Lucky will transfer on August 23rd, 2009.

To read the full article, click here.

Posted by joyce at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our good friend Susan Tenby, Online Community Director of Tech Soup, who also runs the Non-profit Commons in Second Life, has a great article published in the Huffington Post on using virtual worlds such as Second Life to help connect, engage and educate between real world events and virtual spaces.

In her article, she also mentions Global Kids work as a great examples of this.

Large foundations are beginning to take notice and leaders like the MacArthur Foundation are not only providing grants to nonprofits to help grow their virtual presence, they are holding events on their own island. Other nonprofit communities like Global Kids teach digital media skills to young people and have successful funded programs in Second Life. More nonprofits are seeing virtual worlds, like Second Life, as one of a handful of social media tools that are essential in their Web and outreach strategies.

Thanks for the mention Susan! You can check out the full article here.

Posted by joyce at 5:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chronicle of Philanthropy's podcast series latest episode spotlights Philanthropy in Virtual Worlds and features a discussion between host Allison Fine and MacArthur Foundation's Connie Yowell and our own Barry Joseph.

Episode 7: Philanthropy in Virtual Worlds

Connie Yowell, director of education at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Barry Joseph, director of the online leadership program for Global Kids, discuss how nonprofit groups are working in virtual spaces like Second Life. Allison Fine, the host, also offers ideas on how virtual worlds can help organizations raise money and promote their causes. (Running time: 12:36)

Check out the episode on their site, listen to it below or download it.

Posted by joyce at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the past two summers, I've worked with Global Kids and various approved adults to bring the Relay for Life Second Life to the teen grid. We've been pretty successful in the past, but I'm bringing it back to Global Kids Island this year and it's better then ever.

With very much help from Fayandria Foley on the Main Grid through email and IM; and Nuala Maracas (also known as Nuala Maven on the Teen Grid) we're taking the grid by storm. It's only been about two weeks and we've already raised over L$45,000 (that's about $160 USD). The teens have totally blown our mind and done way more than we could have ever imagined.

On June 1st, the main grid Relay had an event to "Paint SL Purple". Even though it was a Monday and many of the teens were in the middle of finals, we decided to hold an event on Global Kids. We had a party and a wonderful purple-filled turnout! With my somewhat new found estate manager powers on the islands, I was able to take some terrain textures and make them purple and I turned the entire island Purple. I must say, it looked very rad.

Posted by Lucky - SL Intern at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Join Global Kids this week, Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 2:00 - 4:00 PM (EST), 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM (SLT) in the Clemson Teaching Learning, (173, 212, 26) sim for the Second Life main grid opening of the game CONSENT! We will be holding tours of the game, discussing the TSL project & holding question & answer segments throughout.

IM Rhiannon Chatnoir for a teleport during the Second Life event.

CONSENT! is a first person, simulation game based on Harriet A. Washington's book "Medical Apartheid" (www.medicalapartheid.com) in which your avatar assumes the role of an African-American prisoner who has to make tough decisions about whether to choose to 'consent' and submit to medical experiments, which took place during the time period of the 1940s to the present.

The game was designed and developed by Global Kids youth leaders in the Playing 4 Keeps after school program at South Shore High School, NYC using tools in the virtual world of Teen Second Life. Additional building and scripting was also done by the teen-run TSL development company, Digital Refinery.

Find out more information on CONSENT on this blog or on Global Kids Playing 4 Keeps program site.

The Playing 4 Keeps program was made possible through the generous support of Microsoft Corporations US Partners in Learning.

Thank you to Clemson University and the generous use of the Clemson Teaching and Learning Services sim for display of CONSENT!

Posted by joyce at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Christmas is a very common holiday around the world. We all acknowledge that almost every country celebrates it, but do we know how they celebrate Christmas? For this reason, I decided to build an exhibit to showcase how different countries celebrated Christmas. The countries that I had built an exhibit for was Mexico, Australia, Nigeria, Italy, India and Japan. Starting with Mexico, I took all the attendees around the exhibit room to talk about the different pictures that were up. After going around the room, I had announced a “contest”. The participants were to take a photo in second life regarding what Christmas meant to them. Anything and anyone (with their consent) could be used in the snapshot. The winner of the snapshot contest would have their photo put onto the wall in the exhibit. The snapshots were handed in, and so it was then time for a discussion. Teens answered questions about what they saw in the exhibit, such as the similarities between the different countries and the common themes of Christmas. Overall, the ideas of food, thankfulness and family were relevant in every single country.

Overall, I think event ran pretty smoothly with a minimal amount of downtime, except for the time given to produce a snapshot. The tour gave explanations of each photo to expand the general knowledge. The discussion towards the end of the event really made me realize that teens are able to understand any topic, regardless of the complexity. The questions weren’t just answered, but were expanded by the participants. If I were to do the event again, I would have had higher level questions ready for the discussion, also I would have addressed some ways how teens can help their society with the information they just obtained. I would do the event again in a heartbeat and thanks to all that came, and I hope you will be able to use what you learned for Christmas in 2009.

Posted by Nate - SL Intern at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Barry Joseph, along with David Klevan of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, were guests on the January 26th episode of the show Metanomics. They both spoke on education in virtual worlds including Teen Second Life. Video highlights from Barry's comments, including further thoughts on the importance of a Teen only virtual space within Second Life, are below along with links to the full video and transcripts.

View or download the full event video here. (MP4)Read the transcript.

Posted by joyce at 12:08 PM | 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)

Anne Collier from Net Family News recently wrote a response to the recent Pennsylvania state attorneys general peer-reviewed research in the the recent Internet Safety Technical Task Force. She summarizes some of the key points in their research and then offers up her thoughts on the topic of risks for youth on social networks.

The attorneys general have said the research is outdated (see the Wall Street Journal) and not enough about predators in social-network sites, so study author Nancy Willard analyzed some data that couldn't be more current: all online predator arrests in Pennsylvania from 2005 through the middle of this month, cited in press releases in Attorney General Tom Corbett's Web site.

But online crime needs to be seen in context too. Crime must be addressed, but so much of what is happening online - including among teens, of course - is good. Or neutral. Or bad but not necessarily criminal. Increasingly, the Web mirrors all of "real life." Our kids deserve more from parents than fear about it and from the rest of us than overemphasis on crime.

She then goes on to cite the recent staff reflection from Barry on the topic of mixed virtual spaces for youth entitled On Plans to Turn Second Life from an Age-segregated to a Mixed-Age Virtual World.

Continue reading "[SL] Putting youth social networking risks in context" »

Posted by joyce at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For three years Global Kids has worked in the youth-only section of Second Life; it has been some of the most exciting work I have ever gotten to do in my life. Last week it was announced that eventually it will be closed. I wrote this in response and welcome comments. Thanks are due to my great staff who helped me shape my ideas and language.

If Linden Lab turns Second Life into a mixed-age grid we should not presume that, as night must follow day, that the need has passed for their youth-only grid, Teen Second Life (TSL). I would argue, in fact, that just the opposite is true, that the promise offered by TSL has yet to be realized and that replacing it with a mixed-age grid will only exacerbate existing problems that prevent youth from taking full advantage of this remarkable space.

Continue reading "[staff] On Plans to Turn Second Life from an Age-segregated to a Mixed-Age Virtual World" »

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

Connie Yowell, MacArthur’s Education Director, recently introduced a new series of posts highlighting the work of youth in digital media production, including two teens in Global Kids' Online Leadership Programs, Mariel Garcia and Nafiza Akter.

We wanted to take some time over this holiday season to spotlight voices of those rarely heard from on this blog - but who also inspire and challenge us to think in new directions. Over the next several weeks we'll hear directly from youth who are engaged in their own creative media production - they are remixing, building, designing, and creating their own original videos, podcasts, machinima, games, and networking sites. Their work challenges us to use media in new and creative ways and provides models of innovation and vision for the future. These youth come to us through two incredible programs - The Digital Youth Network in Chicago and Global Kids' Online Leadership Program in New York City - both of which foster media literacy and civic participation through creative production.

Mariel García: My Digital Life

It is hard for me to sit down and realize that I have actually created media in the strict sense of the word. Although I got a computer at home at a young age, I grew up looking up at people who created content that reached many corners of the world. Now that I see comments or the statistics in the cyberspace I have occupied that say people maybe not from all countries, but certainly from all regions of the world have looked at content I have made, I can’t help but go, ‘Oh, wow. Yay Internet’.

Nafiza Akter: Virtual Video Projects

The last couple of years with Global Kids are hard to describe in a few words, especially the work I’ve done around digital media. November 2006, the first Virtual Video Project program began. The mission of the program was to produce a short machinima, which is a term used to describe a film produced in a virtual platform, about a global issue. Most of us, if not all, went into the program without any prior knowledge of Second Life, which was the Virtual World we filmed on.

Posted by joyce at 2:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the article Virtual Environments and the K-12 Education, Kelly Czarnecki offers up a look at projects using virtual worlds in K-12 schools and what is being learned from them. Within that framework she brings up Teen Second Life and spotlights Suffern Middle School and our Science in Second Life program as a good example of enabling educators to utilize virtual worlds to engage students, specifically in Science, technology and programming.

Download the article as a PDF.

Posted by joyce at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Wednesday December 17, Global Kids and Scenarios USA presented the virtual premiere of three youth-written films in Second Life. The screening brought together around 50 teens and adults on both the Teen Grid and Main Grid of Second Life.  The audiences got to watch three short films on the subject of "The Real Deal with Masculinity" written by teens in Texas, Cleveland and New York. 

A report on the event follows after the jump...

Continue reading "[conf] Scenarios USA & Global Kids premiere 3 youth films in Second Life" »

Posted by Rik at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello Everyone.

I'm going to share with you my review about my first GK Intern event.

I hosted it on Thursday, 4th of December 2008. The topic had to be Global Warming because I really do like the topic and stuff related with that. So I throught it would be cool to do something in-world about it for the TG Community to enjoy. The event was hosted at the GK Intern area on Global Kids Island, awesome place!. Before the event I managed to set up a few globes and uploaded a few pictures related to Global Warming along with additional details required for the event.

The event lasted for 1 hour and 20 minutes with many teen grid residents of the community joining in and debating about the past, present and future of Global Warming. I think in total there was around 20+ that attended the event which is great, because there was not many folks on the grid when I started. I was worried who was going to show up, but I managed to get the word out on time.

At 1:33pm SLT, the volcano went off during the event, at the abnormal weather stage. Could this be a sign or something else? lol

Here is the shedule of the Global Warming event
1pm SLT - Introduction of the Intern Event
1:10pm SLT - GK Guidelines
1:15pm SLT - Section 1: Background on Global Warming & Q&A
1:22pm SLT - Section 2: Global Warming Changes
1:30pm SLT - Section 3 - Impacts of Global Warming & Q&A
1:35pm SLT - Section 4 - The future
1:45pm SLT - Q&A
2pm SLT - Section 5 - How to make a difference
2:11pm SLT - Section 6 - How to Take Action Now
2:15pm SLT - Section 7 - Global Warming information packs & final Q&A
2:20pm SLT - The end of my event - wooot

My review

Okay, so..I managed to find and I did alot of planning for the event. As you know, I love spreading the word about events on GK, so I decided to send out Event notecards to my friends around the TG grid first. Then 8 minutes before the event started I sent out event details through all global kids groups and started group conferences, haha.

Things that worked well, was that many found it interesting on some section areas of global warming during the event. The participants brought their points across really clearly and the feedback extremely helpful and very specific. I throught people enjoyed listening to the facts and information I was sharing with them. I'm sure that people throught I was very positive and very welcoming through out the event, which is awesome.

Things that did not go so well was asking enough questions to the participants to get more views across about certain things of Global Warming. Some participants decided to drop out half through and teleport else where, so maybe I need to look into what makes teens stay longer for next time. However, I managed to get help from participants to get more people back to the event, I think that worked successfully. I was happy that people were interested still.

Areas to improve on for next time; I think I would expand the time frame out If I had to do it again, from 1hr 20mins to 2 hours to allow more time to discuss, play a game and get more teens engaged into Global Warming. My idea for next time is to use Human Barometer to see if people agree, disagree or don't know about certain statements and then they could talk about why they picked that option.

If I had to do it again, I would change a few things. I would change the time of the event to later in the day like 4pm SLT until 6pm SLT because many U.S residents are on then and more people on the grid, wooot. I also would change the event details and expand that by asking people that attend more questions about the subject. At the start I would add a fun activity section where everyone did a quick brainstorm about Global Warming and then feed back to the rest of the group, which would be great fun for all. :D

My last thoughts is that the GK Intern event went really well and everything went smoothly without many problems to worry about, hehe. I hope everyone enjoyed the event and throught it was interesting to find out new things. :)

Thanks so much for attending my event. If want a copy of the Global Warming information packs, please IM me in-world or e-mail me. :)

Daniel Voyager
TSL Resident.

Posted by Daniel Voyager - SL Intern at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably have read about Global Kids work with youth programs and the U.S. Holocaust Museum. If not, you can view past entries here.

Recently the museum launched a Second Life main grid exhibit that builds off of the Teen SL experience. In a Virtual World News article, David Klevan of the U.S. Holocaust cited:

"The project was inspired by a separate effort from the summer of 2007 with Global Kids on the Teen Grid that asked a group of high school students to conceive of an interactive space around the event."

You can read the full announcement article here or visit it here.

And, if you haven't already, check out our own Rik's article on his experience visiting the virtual exhibit here and his video tour below.

Posted by joyce at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Wednesday December 17, Scenarios USA and Global Kids will be hosting the virtual premiere of the three youth-written short films produced by Scenarios on the subject "What's the Real Deal about Masculinity?". Taking place on both the Teen Grid and Main Grid of Second Life, both youth and adult residents will be able to watch excerpts from the three films, listen to a live interview with two of the youth writers, and ask questions about the films.

DATE: December 17, 2008
TIME: 12:30pm PST / 3:30pm EST
LOCATIONS : Machinima Island , Teen Second Life (teleport link)
International Justice Center, Second Life (teleport link)

This stream will be active during the event only.

Posted by Rik at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So on November 17th , 2008 I ran the event “Genocide it has to end!” To try and raise awareness of whats going on in darfur.

So, when I started the workshop voice went down. So I found it pretty hard to adapt to typing but I found it kind of easy after a while. So when I started the workshop, I asked the participants a few questions about what Genocide was and a couple of other questions just to get some ideas about what they knew. This went down pretty much without a hitch.

After I got through the views on genocide, I moved on to my main task, a RP (role-play) activity involving four groups, each one with a specific link to the genocide in Darfur and each could have a few possible solutions for the problem. I found that I wasn't clear enough with presenting the task and suffered for this later, however the groups that asked me about the task and grasped what I meant had some really amazing discussions on their views of the subject, some of them collided and turned more into a argument rather than a discussion but it was kept under control. Then as I went round group to group asking about the views or possible solutions to the genocide, I was really surprised about how much thought some of the participants had put into their answers, for me this was the highlight of the event as it implied they had read all of the information I had given them and learned a lot of it and became aware of the situation in a lot more detail.

After the RP, I decided to finish the fireside with a few questions that turned into a discussion, again I found this to be really exciting, as a lot of the teens there really started to get involved in their answers, and I had to calm them down so I could move from question to question, but this went pretty smoothly too. It took up a lot more time than I thought that it would but it turned out to be the best activity to get all of the participants involved in.

After running over by about 20 miniutes, the event finally finished and I felt it was a big success as some of the teens that came stayed and continued to debate even though it was over.

On the whole Id say the workshop even with drawbacks like having no voice, went really well for my first attempt. Ive learned to pre-type anything I can think of as it saves time typing during the workshop. And that I need to be A LOT more clear when I'm giving out instructions, even if it means taking extra time so that someone fully grasps what they are doing.

Posted by Grimreaper - SL Intern at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a recent post on the VW 4 Real Learning blog, Viki Silvansky goes over an interesting micro lesson focusing on avatar appearance, she developed using the Global Kids Second Life Curriculum. Her thoughts being that avatar appearance is one of the first key elements most users of virtual world spaces like Second Life want to tackle.

"In the last blog I mentioned about my view of you in-world orientation places and how they use different approaches for helping newbeis. In this blog, the focus will be on out-world source called "Global Kids Curriculum (GKCx)" and the method it use to motivated users to try and learn new things so that I will finally be able to come up with I own learning environment in-world used GKCx methods. The curriculum is divided into 9 main levels, each including some related modules with predefined missions for students to carry out. I've been asked to choose one modules out of 4 modules (appearance, walking and flying, talk a close look and chat) within level one as part of my weekly activity and develop my own environment based on that."

Read the full post here.

Posted by joyce at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I first learned about the crisis in Burma last year from the 30-day campaign challenge to rally 50,000 voices to speak out for the Burmese who, in their own country are not allowed to speak out for themselves. If they did they could face serious time in prison. How much? Recently a blogger speaking the truth about the oppression was sentenced 20 years in prison.

After following the campaign closely and spreading the word in my hometown I found that sadly Burma’s issues are unknown by the general public. So I decided that holding a fireside workshop in TSL on the topic would be a great idea.

Participants were given basic information on the crimes being committed in Burma, a general time line of events from the 40’s all the way up to today, and information on major players and their impact on the crisis. This was probably the most challenging part of the entire fireside. Planning was quite frustrating, what would be too much information, what is most important to get across, and how do you go about presenting this much information at once without boring people to death? I eventually came to the conclusion that my best bet would be to include all of the facts needed for basic comprehension.

For the main activity groups of participants were given 10 minutes to research a topic and find a picture that represents it. They would then upload the picture and explain to the group why the picture represented the topic. The groups were given the topics 8-8-88, and human rights. Both groups did an excellent job both defining their topic and finding pictures/making shirts that represented their topic.

Group 2 does their presentation on Human Rights.

As always there were things I learned while planning and running this fireside.
1. My mic hates me so if someone is telling me its not cooperating I need to switch to text instead of waiting to see if it will clear up.
2. Large amounts of information need to be broken up so participants don’t get bored. Finding a more interactive way of presenting the information would also work.
3. Getting frustrated that things I can’t control keep causing problems just creates another problem.

Over all I think that my main goal was reached. People who had never heard of Burma now know it exists, know of the junta and all the despicable crimes they commit everyday.

Posted by Victoria - TSL Intern at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Election Event went over very fantastically. I would like to thank Nate Kongo for helping me out during this entire event. I would also like to thank all of the Gkids for making this election year a good year for the teenagers of Teen Second Life. This event would have gone down badly if it wasn't for the people that kept it together.

The event itself consisted of a few different key elements that made it successful. Whether it be the intelligence of all the teen residents that decided to have a voice or perhaps even the fact that the topics were spoken about so intelligently. It was all a very mature conversation and a lot of people seemed to have enjoyed themselves.

The event itself was not the best thing that happened that night. The voting booth showed that Barack Obama had a clear victory over the teens in the grid with most of the votes going to him over McCain.

The event was a complete success in all different aspects. I have never seen an event go so long and still feel like a powerful event even after the 2 hour limit that was set unto the previous events. This event has indeed inspired me to make a longer event and without haste I will again do another event of this magnitude. All the teens have respected their rules and have sent me IMs within the past week saying how good of an event it was. My reply was always the same. I always said "I want teens to have a voice, and I am glad that you appreciate the gift that was given to the teen grid" as a sign of gratitude.

Continue reading "[tsl/leadership/teen] Election Day Event" »

Posted by Lee - SL Intern at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'd been looking for an excuse to use this great video on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for a while now, and yesterday I finally got a chance to. It was in a fireside workshop I did in Teen Second Life I titled "Know Your Rights!" which was kind of a 101 on human and civil rights, what the difference is between the two, and the struggles to defend them historically as well as up to this day. (The workshop, as is the case of many of the firesides we do, is actually a riff off of a classic GK face to face workshop on the same issue called "Youth, Understanding Rights and Civic Participation").

Conducting it in SL allowed me to more easily add the video as a nice appetizer to the subject, and I knew that SL teens, being more design oriented than average, would enjoy its clean aesthetics. It led into a substantive discussion on the differences between civil and human rights (civil are granted by the state, human are implicit in being, well, human), and I was impressed by the number of teens that participated that were able to articulate the difference between the two.

Our main activity was called "The Prioritization of Rights", and in it teams had order the US Bill of Rights in terms of importance. One of the things that I found most interesting in hearing the teams present their opinions was how much variance there was between the groups about which rights they felt were most importance. Freedom of speech and religion were often towards the top, while I think I only heard freedom from cruel and unusual punishment in the top five once. It really highlighted how hard it is to rank rights that are so basic, which is, of course, the point of the activity.

We closed off with a more broad based discussion about the nature of rights and how they're valued (or not) in different parts of the world, and whether certain ones are given more attention or priority than others. Inevitably, one of the teens brought up the recently passed Proposition 8 (which bans gay marriage in the state of California), and talked about how in his opinion that was a violation of basic human rights, and others from the group chimed in about whether they felt it should even have been on the ballot considering it takes away rights (most felt it should not have been). It was really heartening to see teens looking at the world through this lens of basic human rights and evaluating what they saw on that basis. We'd live in a better world if everyone did the same.

Posted by Rafi Santo at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On November 4th, 2008, many teens came together to discuss various issues regarding the presidential election led by Lee Soothsayer and myself. Despite not being able to vote, they still had ideas to carry the event for hours. When considering the idea to host a debate in teen second life, questions come up about whether or not teens are mature enough to discuss topics that are generally taken care of by adults. After hearing what some teens had to say, it was clear to me that the answer to the previous question was yes.

Even emotional topics, such as abortion and the minimum wage were discussed by the group of teens. Some other topics discussed included the Iraq War, the US economy, education, taxes, healthcare, and energy. As people started coming, the discussion really picked up into a fully fledged debate. The great thing was that everyone had respect for each other, and so the debate had not gone out of control.

For discussing the war in Iraq, we had used the agreement scales to put forth our opinions. For the most part, teens seemed to be against the war in Iraq and that America should pull out. With abortion teens were pretty much split with the idea of banning it. One argument was that it should be the choice of the person giving birth as it is part of them. The other side had put forth the argument of, what if the country’s best president could have been born, but was instead aborted. Pretty much for every topic discussed, there were enough people on each side to put forth valid reasons of argument.

After running this event with Lee Soothsayer, we both feel that teen second life is a perfect place to hold debates because teens have a huge amount of ideas and opinions to put forth, and after all, we are the future of the world.

Posted by Nate - SL Intern at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We recently had a online wiki review of our Second Life curriculum, which while not totally glowing in nature, was a very lovingly crafted, thorough overview of it.

You can read the review here.

Posted by joyce at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As we blogged yesterday, yesterday in TSL we coordinated a mock election. With the help of many amazing teens including Ryan Dayton, who scripted a grid-wide voting system, and Victoria Hanfoi, who put together non-partisan candidate fact sheets to place near the polls (not to mention staying online all day yesterday teleporting people to vote!), we managed to hold what we think might be the first ever mock US Presidential Vote in a teen virtual world.

After teens voted, many stopped in and participated in a GK Intern run event by Lee Soothsayer and Nate Kongo; an open mic/debate about the race and the issues related to it. (Look for a blog post from them soon!) It was incredible just to be a fly on the wall during the event, listening as teens debated really touchy issues from abortion to the war in an incredibly civil way.

Oh? What's that? You want to know who won the TSL mock election? Oh, right! Here are the results:

358 Votes Total

John McCain/Sarah Palin: 91 votes. (25%)

Barack Obama/Joe Biden: 245 votes. (68%) - WINNER!

Chuck Baldwin/Darrell Castle: 2 votes. (1%)

Bob Barr/Wayne Allen Root: 7 votes. (2%)

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente: 2 votes. (1%)

Ralph Nadar/Matt Gonzalez: 11 votes. (3%)

Thanks to all who voted, and next time hopefully you'll be of age to do it in real life!

Posted by Rafi Santo at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Young people under the age of 18 usually don't get to experience the joys of voting in the United States.  But today teens on the Teen Grid of Second Life can head to Global Kids island (click here to teleport) to vote for their favorite presidential candidate. A virtual voting booth, created by teen Ryan Dayton, will be automatically tabulating votes for the next 24 hours until midnight PST.  Other voting booths will be scattered across the Teen Grid today as well.

UPDATE 11:30 pm EST:  Here's the poll numbers so far - TSL Mock Election Statistics: 358 Votes Total
John McCain/Sarah Palin: 91 votes (25%). Barack Obama/Joe Biden: 245 votes (68%). Chuck Baldwin/Darrell Castle: 2 votes (1%). Bob Barr/Wayne Allen Root: 7 votes (2%). Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente: 2 votes (1%). Ralph Nadar/Matt Gonzalez: 11 votes (3%).

Posted by Rik at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Recently on the HASTAC, The Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory blog, Sheryl Grant writes on RezEd.org, virtual worlds and Global Kids programs like I Dig Tanzania.

In the I Dig Tanzania summer camp, students were part of a guided experience, using avatars to bridge gaps of distance and understanding with the help of educators and mentors. Given how easy it is to be invisible and anonymous online, virtual worlds can sometimes raise ethical questions -- for youth and adults alike. Like anything that we do with kids, positive mentoring and best practices play an important role, themes that run through RezEd's community.

It has some great quotes from James Paul Gee, and our own Amira Fouad and Barry Joseph.

"Virtual worlds are not escapist fantasies but a new way to extend our lives and our sense of self. How can virtual worlds expand our lives in new ways," asks Joseph, "What social affects arise as a result, and are these results desirable?" It will be communities of practice like RezEd and pioneering groups like Global Kids that will help determine the answers.

Click here, to read the full article.

Posted by joyce at 2:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This conversation on the DigiTeen forum led me to think of recent interactions I’ve had in TSL. Everyone knows there are benefits and drawbacks to text (non-voice) communication. Typing gives us the time to consider our thoughts. It makes it sometimes easier to have a difficult conversation. It allows a conversation to flow more smoothly - giving the types who find it difficult to ‘cut in’ on a vocal conversation an opportunity to have their voice heard. On the other hand, emotion and nuance is more easily lost in text. Lately, I’ve often found myself wondering “is he kidding around?”, as the subtlety of tone of voice and expression are missing.
Most of the times I’ve heard this debate has been around newer members to the online community. In particular, we have some new members in our DIDI ‘Cool Kids’ workshops. These guys are at a stage where they are expected to work offline together on their venture plans, and report back to us the next week when we meet online. As remote facilitators we’ve had some difficulty interpreting some of their conversations. Are the jabs these guys are poking at each other serious? Are they ‘just playin’’ or are they really expressing a problem or concern about their teamwork? So far, we haven’t addressed our difficulty in understanding these jabs any further than saying “hey guys - we can’t tell if you’re joking!” I am assuming that learning to be appropriate online comes with time and experience, and perhaps having some people call you on it a few times, will remind you that it’s just not as obvious to those reading your text as it might have sounded in your head :)
Of course, I have considered that it’s just my issue as an old uptight ‘adult’ who takes things too seriously....

Posted by Meghan at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello! I'm a brand new intern in the GK Leadership Program on Teen Second Life. My name is Animaster Dragonash. Let's see. About me... First of all, I am a dedicated teen wanting to make the environment cleaner. Which is the main reason I joined Global Kids. So I can raise awareness about ecological issues. I also love animals. That's pretty much some about me.

Posted by Animaster - SL Intern at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the highlights at SLCC was Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdon addressing the conferenceover breakfast. During Mark's part of the talk, he mentioned several times how much he was moved by his visit to the GK offices & seeing first hand our work in TSL.

Transcript:

And there was a moment, when I first started, I was trying to get out to visit folks and I went to meet with the folks at Global Kids in New York and I got to see some of the kids using Second Life to learn. I get choked up whenever I think about it because it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen happen and it is such a profound responsibility. And, of course, what went through my head was gee I can't screw this up.

Man I tell you, I love school, but when I saw the kids at Global Kids using Second Life to learn, I was like, I think I will just quit my job and go back to school. Because if that is what learning will be like in the future, I think we will be a much richer society for it.

Posted by joyce at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)