Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

Global Kids - a Non-Profit Grows in Second Life
By Christien Suntzu
The Metaverse Messenger

     Given the recent attention devoted to making a living in a virtual world (Wired News, Feb. 8), it is comforting to know that the non-profit sector of "real life" society is also alive and well in the virtual realm. This week, we check in with one example of an educational non-profit organization taking root byte-by-byte in electronic soil: Global Kids.

     Global Kids is a New York-based educational organization founded in 1990 that guides and supports urban youth to become global citizens, community leaders and successful students. The Online Leadership Program run by Second Life Resident GlobalKids Bixby, a.k.a. Barry Joseph, adapts Global Kids' successful youth development model to the Internet, creating new opportunities for bringing civic engagement, global awareness and leadership development to youth around the world through online games, online dialogues, and social action.

     With a strong interest in online games and communication, it should be no surprise to find them residing in Second Life, where they built an island on the teen grid so they could work directly with roughly 100 teens. 

     The largest part of the island is currently dedicated to the Global Kids Digital Media Essay Contest, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The contest ended March 23, and was designed to assist youth to talk about the role of digital media in their lives and promote their voices to influence public policy. The contest, built by The Magicians, was structured in the form of an adventure. Teens received a decoder ring when they arrived, to allow them to understand the talking rock, tree, and bats. The lake offered three different Earth Thrones, which, when sat upon, caused a globe to rise from the deep and quiz the residents with questions about global digital media. If answered correctly, the residents received a fire amulet and access to the volcano. Once inside the volcano, they found a cave full of stalactites, stalagmites, bats and items needed to complete the contest, such as essay instructions and a virtual envelope for submitting their essay. Over 20 submissions for the contest came from the teen grid. One submission was itself in the form of a build.

     The rest of the island contains giant books from a number of Global Kids programs, copies of Holy Meatballs of Divine Spongiform (a journal created by Barry Joseph), a Rhiannon-designed flower garden featuring photos and captions from the student photo program, and dispensers for the Save Darfur Campaign's charity wristbands (with notecards), associated with the real-world project.

     In-world, students explore the essay contest region and participate in Global Kids workshops regarding digital media to help them think in a deeper way about digital media, addressing such issues as racism online, the power of online relationships, and Second Life as an educational environment. They also explore the various Global Kids projects, like the books and flower pots. Finally, they have a build area set aside for their own experimentation.

     As with any virtual world, the embodied nature of Second Life creates a wide array of learning opportunities. Learners can experiment with their own racial or gender identity and develop leadership skills through collaborative projects. According to Barry, "places like Second Life are on the cutting edge, demonstrating the emergence of the sophisticated educational potential of digital media."

     Barry chose Second Life as an educational platform after analyzing the start up costs associated with building his own massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). He said that he and his team had spent two years developing a concept for a MMOG, "with conflict at the center, to explore abstracted social and economic inequalities, to train teenagers about public policy and how to advocate for change." While the nature of Second Life does not lend itself well to the initial vision, it does allow Global Kids to reach an audience of "tech savvy youth, to use games as a form of youth media amongst our Global Kids Youth Leaders, to bring global and social issues into virtual worlds, to explore how content-rich virtual worlds can be vehicles for experimenting with identity, learning systems thinking, and so much more," says Barry.

     Plus it is affordable, especially compared with the costs associated with developing a rich, multi-player game engine from scratch.
     Excerpts from some recent essays by Global Kids reveal what the island residents think about Second Life. According to Veroo Epsilon, "With the Internet, and with many programs and games, you can learn things you wouldn't [learn] in school, or from any other place." TheCoolLeader Boyer apparently agrees, chiming in to describe "things I have been able to do only in Second Life that I couldn't have done in real life: owning land, having a house, having a shop, building creations and scripting them to do stuff, flying, fighting in battle areas, making my own guns, causing objects to explode at random, and making a small company with some of my friends that I know only through Second Life." 

     Not only do students find that they can do things in-world that they cannot do in real life, but they also see differences in how people interact in the virtual world. Boyer finds that people are more social and open in the virtual world than they are in real life. This echoes findings by MMOG researchers such as Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt Squire and others who study the increasing amount of social interaction taking place not only in open-ended virtual worlds such as Second Life, but in more focused environments like Star Wars Galaxies and Lineage. 

     Connections abound when looking at this group. To facilitate communication with the adult Second Life community, they maintain a location at Cincta 83,106,21, which provides a link between the group's work on the teen grid and that on the main grid. Right now the main grid site contains the first two volumes of The Holy Meatballs of Divine Spongiform, and the flower pots from the student photo show. They will soon display the winners from the essay contest as well.

     Readers interested in finding more information about Global Kids have an abundance of options. There is information about a number of programs and initiatives on their website at
www.globalkids.org, including the Online Leadership Program run by Barry Joseph.  A blog is also in the works at www.holymeatballs.org, which will provide weekly updates regarding the Global Kids presence in Second Life, as well as other online projects, including an online dialog with the NewsHour on PBS, a serious gaming program focusing on poverty as an obstacle to education, and an online dialog at
www.newzcrew.org.
     Residents can also join Global Kids Allies, a main grid group, to support the group and keep in touch with their work in Second Life.
     As a non-profit based outside of Second Life, Global Kids is working to bridge the gap between those within and outside Second Life. Hopefully, this bridge is one more step toward improving our world - both the virtual and the tangible. As Lucky Sillanpaa wrote, "With racism all around us, inside and outside the Internet, there is little we can do about it. But if even one person is a bit less racist toward one another, maybe it will stop." Here's hoping Global Kids will continue to be one group working toward making that vision a reality!

Originally in: The Metaverse Messenger - A real newspaper for a virtual world
www.metaversemessenger.com