Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

To watch all of them at once, go to the youtube playlist.

1) Introduction

(watch the video on YouTube.)

2) On Games and Learning

“As an educator, I [think about how] video games can teach us about learning, how people can learn even when it’s very challenging, very difficult, and enjoy it.” (watch on YouTube.)

3) On Having a Body in a Virtual world

“With Second Life, we all come in here having a second chance to have an identity that isn’t just the one we have in the real world, we can change things… In a way, we’re able to transcend our real world…” (watch on YouTube.)

4) On Modding and Thinking Like a Designer

“My hope is that kids who think like [game] designers will grow up to be politicians who think of the world in a much more complex way…” (watch on YouTube)

5) On Being a 59-year Old Balding White Man

“It’s really gratifying to me not to have to be a 59-year-old balding white male all the time. To be able to take on another body, to do different things, be in different worlds, is really liberating.” (watch on YouTube)

6) On Choosing Identity as a Strategy

“For the first time in your life, you can choose when to use [gender, ethnicity, class]. You can use it as a strategy, you can use with people you want to and put it aside.” (Watch on YouTube.)

7) On Video Games as Art

“In the modern world, art and technology are not separated anymore. They go hand in hand and the divide between art, science, and technology are disappearing.” (watch on YouTube)

8) On Avatars as a Surrogate Body

“I am very intrigued by the capacity to transform your looks and have a different body. All the research shows that these avatars are treated by other people as another surrogate body, and we react to it in that way.” (watch on YouTube)

9) On Politicians, Second Life, and the Freedom to Offend

“The thing we found, when you talk to policy makers, the one thing they got from Second Life is that it is a world that people built themselves, and that you can be free to build any type of community you want…” (watch on YouTube.)

10) On Second Life and Youth Entrepreneurship

“I have met over the last six months with at least five organizations that’s trying to set up ways for teens to run businesses, inspired by Second Life.” (watch on YouTube.)

11) On the Flattening World

“Thomas Friedman’s book argues that in the future, unless American schools do a lot better job of getting people to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial, we will have very big economic problems…” (watch on YouTube.)

12) On Doing versus Knowing

“Even people who have A’s in things like science, when you give them tests to actually do the science and not just pass a paper and pencil test on it, most of them can’t do it… A game puts a stress on you doing something, not just knowing it, but putting your knowledge to practice.” (watch on YouTube.)

13) On Game Addiction

“If a person spending all their time in the World of Warcraft or Second Life, then we ought to start to ask, Why are they doing that? It means something is being given to them in this world that isn’t being given to them in the real world. And we have to remedy that problem in the real world rather than just bemoan the fact that they are looking at a world that, to them, is a better world.” (watch on YouTube.)

14) On the Value of Fantasy

“The real world doesn’t allow you to explore all aspects of your personality and many of us get to be 59 and still be children. I’m still one of those people, and I love the fact that video games can allow me to still be a child in many ways. And I think that boy, we’re in a society where you better stay a child for as long as possible.” (watch on YouTube.)

15) Farewells

“I haven’t been able to pay close attention to the chat, I don’t know how many people have been saying nasty things about me…The interesting thing is I haven’t lived in your world, I haven’t talked to your people, so I don’t know if I’ve violated your culture.” (watch on YouTube.)