[book] Totally Wired - What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein
Global Kids' work in Second Life was mentioned in this new book: Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are REALLY Doing Online, by Anastasia Goodstein.
Here is an excerpt from it:
Global Kids, a New York-based educational organization founded in 1990 that supports low-income inner-city youth to become community leaders and successful students, is the first non-profit organization to have built an island in Teen Second Life. Teens can visit the island, but the adults who work at Global Kids cannot visit the teen grid. The Online Leadership Program, run by 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.”
One way Global Kids has done this by displaying a 3-D book with photos, films and essays created by the Global Kids teens on the island for the Second Life teens to check out. The organization also ran an essay contest with a $200 prize on the island where the teens had to follow clues in order to discover what the essay topic was. Verre described how Global Kids invited the Second Life teens to the island for a workshop with the Global Kids teens where Joseph asked them to come up with their approach to solving difficult social issues. The teens responded by saying they would “have a big comedy show so people can joke about it and not feel so bad about some of these issues and be all friendly and happy.” The teens then built a comedy club on the island where they did stand-up and had a virtual party afterward.
The folks at Linden Lab are working on making Teen Second Life more accessible by simplifying the tools and improving and increasing the tutorials. Youth librarians have voiced interest in setting up a young adult library in Teen Second Life. It’s a unique virtual hangout created by the teens who spend time there. As a result, they have a strong sense of ownership over the community. And since teens have so little control over their lives in the real world, this is a good thing.
