Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

Global Kids has been in the teen grid of Second Life for over a year and a half at this point, and in that time we've had the opportunity to interact with the incredibly talented, creative, intelligent and entrepreneurial young people that exist in that space. Some of them contain so many of these qualities, in fact, that we've hired them to work with us on number of different occasions. Some examples include working with our afterschool program Playing 4 Keeps to build a game in TSL, coding the back-end of our in-world stats system, helping build sets and props for machinima produced by our Virtual Video Project, and even working with us on an on-going basis as a GK remote intern, our jack-of-all-trades in-world.

Over the course of all this teen-led work, a number of really interesting questions have arisen. How do you deal with young people as people that are working with you on deadlines? Where is the line drawn between child labor and youth development? And what does it mean to be educating the teens that are also working for you?

There are no easy answers to these questions. In my experience, many of these young people are happy to test out their skills by taking on projects with us, and view the working with a non-profit as part of their way of giving back to the TSL community. At the same time, it's also clear that many of these teens (naturally) don't have a lot of experience with the world of work, deadlines, client relations or invoicing.

In this regard, I often feel that it's better that they're having an experience with us where they can have the opportunity to learn these things. As clients go, the staff at GK has a lot of experience working with young people for their positive development, and we take that approach and sense of understanding to all our relationships with teens, especially when they're professional ones. Understanding when to set a deadline and hold feet to the fire (a potentially common resort amongst clients with their contractors or bosses with their staff), versus when you need to schedule a call with a teen to talk with them to see what's up and check in can make the difference between having a young person be stressed and fretting versus one that feels understood and happy.

From an educational perspective, there's definitely a view that working with teens in this way also works towards progressing their "real world" education. GK has always believed in project based learning and empowering young people to accomplish things of real value, and through hiring teens we are literally putting money where our mouth is.

At the same time, all of this does, inevitably, change our relationship with them. We are no longer just educators and that can add pressure to a relationship. I've often thought about how in TSL, when I'm on GK island I'm (technically) in my work space while teens that are hanging out with me are in their play space. When hiring teens, you're encountering them in what's most often their play space and transforming it into their work space, something they then need to work to figure out how to handle. And what happens then when they come to a workshop or event on the island? Negotiating the role of student versus educator has always been an interesting thing in virtual worlds where age and power are experienced in a different way than in face to face interactions, and add onto that the roles of client and contractor, and you have a serious bag of identities to negotiate on both sides.

Where does all of this leave us? Exploring I suppose. As I said, there are no simple answers to any of these questions. Sometimes working with teens can be frustrating. Most often it's incredibly rewarding, and watching and working with them as we together produce amazing projects is on the whole a very positive experience for me, and, I think, for them as well. Really, I would love to hear more from them about what it's like, as well as other people's thoughts on the matter.

Posted by Rafi at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This year at my building’s Halloween party, I took the lazy route - I dressed as my avatar. Which looks just like me. But over my head I put a transparency stuck to a pair of rabbit ears, proclaiming my Second Life name. So I was not JUST my avatar - I was my avatar with the U/I turned on! In any case, one of my neighbors asked what I was. I said, My Second Life Avatar. And she said… (here’s the punch line)… “That thing Dwight was doing on The Office. I thought they just made it up. Neat.”

Let it be written: October 2007 was the month of Second Life on broadcast television. Second Life was central to not one, not two, but THREE different fictional shows. And the differences amongst them said a lot about both Second Life and the state of media.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

The first to appear was Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Rather than show the real Second Life, they created a fictional virtual world that was LIKE Second Life and then extrapolated wildly on a criminal case which had occurred earlier in the year. It was all about sex and violence, which apparently is as much a description of this virtual world as it was about Law & Order. Much can be said about this instance but I found much more interesting the two real uses of the virtual which followed later in the month.

CSI: New York

CSI: New York used SL as a major promotional tool for this episode. Four sims with a variety of episode-related games and activities were built in-world, the episode was not planned to conclude until this Spring (so that the activities could continue in SL), a unique SL browser was made for those new to Second Life designed to promote these activities, and made-for-TV commercials aired to promote the CSI-in-SL connection. Finally, during the broadcast, human guides were available upon arrival to the CSI islands to help people out.

The episode itself used impressive use of machinima - 20 minutes or so in total I heard. Sometimes It was pure machinima - our TV screen becoming the character’s computer screen - sometimes it was simply in-scene - in which we watched the characters at his computer going into SL, and sometimes, for no clear reason, the character would stand in front of a wall-sized TV image of SL, as if one would actually do that. The machinima showed places and characters most likely created by CSI’s partners on this project, the Electric Sheep, and was really impressive; however, at times, it depicted things not actually done in SL, such as a Roman amphitheater battle scene, to depict it as more of an action game.

The story was about a murder victim who was a heavy Second Life user. The detectives needed to go in-world in order to track down this avatar’s contacts and locate the killer. In the end, all of the people in-world were murdered - it turned out a hired killer had targeted an elected official active in SL and stole the identity of the first murder victim in order to entrap the poor fellow in real life.

During the episode I went to CSI island and tried to talk with people during the episode. It was rather boring - not much engagement there. And I found the activities not that engaging. Then again, I don’t watch CSI so maybe I am the wrong audience.

The Office

Everyone who cared about Second Life knew about the CSI episode in advance; few people were aware that it would appear the next evening on the Office. I DVR the Office each week so I was all set when a coworker notified me by text-message four minutes into the broadcast. I went right to my recording and fast-forward to the first of three SL appearances in the episode.

Dwight, it turns out, is a Second Life fan. “Last year my life was going so well I decided I wanted a second one. And it turns out, in Second Life, I am also paper salesman.” Second Life was shown three times. Twice showed Dwight at his computer, which cut to images that were pure machinima. Tim was teasing him throughout. The third appearance was Tim speaking with Pam, his love interest, about how silly Dwight was, revealing by accident his OWN avatar. He said it was designed to “follow Dwight” but as he spoke with Pam and grew more embarrassed it became clear that Tim too had gotten sucked into Second Life. Second Life apparently is not just for dweebs who watch Battlestar Galactica. End of joke. End of story.

The first machinima shown depicted Dwight’s avatar taking off to fly from a standing position. Rather than WATCH a detective, it challenged ME to be the detective. What was Dwight’s avatar name? Where did his avatar travel in-world? To whom was he speaking? This was not some fictional CSI space, this was Second Life itself and I knew how to contact people in-world.

So during the live episode I logged in, friended Dwight’s avatar, then looked at his favorite locations. Each description thanked the locations for allowing them to film there. The first location had a name similar to the office park shown in the first machinima shot and I teleported over. I walked into an office reception area and told the person behind the desk that I was there for my interview with Dwight Schrute. Surprise, surprise - so were the other half dozen avatars in the space. The place was a real location that real-world companies rent in Second Life to have office space. It was not a set. And the person behind the desk said that Dwight was there filming last month and they looked forward to seeing the episode.

It turned out that not only had the Office filmed in “real” locations within Second Life, they used places that Dwight would actually go to and did not tell those locations when the show would air.

Now THIS was fun. And it was fun commenting on the show with the other East Coasters who were watching the same episode.

I went back into Dwight’s profile and found his groups. One was for Dunder-Mifflin, the characters company in the show. I joined the group which gave me access to the past Notices, where I read that there was a “back-lot” party that would start at the conclusion of the West Coast feed. Fun! I didn’t stay up that late but visited it the next day, where I found a version of The Office’s office.

CSI vs. The Office

So, what were some of the major differences between how both shows used and depicted Second Life.

How was SL explicitly defined.
CSI: Tech Guy: “It’s not a game. It’s a social network within a virtual world.”
The Office: Dwight: “It’s not a game but a multi-user virtual environment. In Second Life, there are no rules. There are no winners or losers.” To which Jim responds, “Oh, there ARE losers…”

How SL was depicted in the show
CSI: A simulation, a game
The Office: A social network, a place for work

How SL was depicted as used by the character
CSI: Dating/sex and games that don’t actually exist
The Office: Place for personnel expression, a playspace

How SL users were depicted in the show
CSI: At first, tech nerds, then fringe business people, then “establishment”-types seeking illicit sex.
The Office: At first, weird sci-fi nerds (Dwight) but attractive to a “regular Joe” once in-world (Jim) for personal expression.

The Genre of the Machinima
CSI: A fictional scene - constructed sets, props, characters, costumes, etc. Filmed on designed sets.
The Office: Au natural. It was almost a documentary of things found in-world. Filmed on location.

Target for the promotion
CSI: Newbies. For people NOT in SL. Promotion was explicit.
The Office: For fans already in Second Life. Promotion was hidden to be uncovered (had to investigate clues to learn of the party).

Take Aways

Media Integration
Both examples, but specifically CSI, are clearly attempts to associate their “brand” with the “latest thing” to seem hip and to target those demographics. More importantly, as Henry Jenkins describes so well in his recent book Convergence Culture, we are in a period in which the top-down corporate-heavy media producers and their experts creating their products are being increasingly forced to respond to the consumer-creator driven participatory cultures so well emulated by Second Life, a world created by its users. These are interesting attempts from the top down to integrate the two in a non-threatening way.

I would say the results of CSI’s experiment has yet to be seen, but can be measured by the extent to which CSI brought new users into Second Life who first use CSI island but then go beyond it to all of Second Life but associate its participatory affordances with the CSI brand. And I would say the Office’s experiment, albeit at a much smaller scale, has already succeeded. It made me identify with Dwight! I even known wear his Beat Farm t-shirt that I found at the in-world version of The Office.

Public Framing of Second Life

How is the public viewing, or being told to view, Second Life and virtual words and what will that mean for the development of its educational uses? While images of sex and action/fantasy gaming marked depictions in both Law & Order and CSI, The Office’s depiction was quite different. Dwight was still a paper salesman in Second Life and where does he visit when he goes in-world – to an office park! Second Life, from this perspective, is not about sex or escapist gaming – it’s an extension of the real world.

The more the public views Second Life as a place to extend their real life – like a telephone – the closer we get to it being viewed as a place for real world education.

Posted by Barry at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Games are both the products of culture, and the shapers of it. Play has always been used as a way for individuals to model real scenarios and practice life skills. The types of play that society approves of, therefore, indicate the types of activities and social roles of which it approves. The ways people play tells us the values of a society, which behaviors are “normal” and desirable.

Obviously, a society is not monolithic, and thus different groups within it will favor some values (and their corresponding activities and games) while other groups will promote contrary values. Children playing house are modeling the socially acceptable heterosexual nuclear family. Little boys playing war and fighting Nazis, commies, or now terrorists, reflect our militaristic culture and fear of foreign enemies.

What social values, then, do we see when people are playing Manhunt 2—a gritty exploration of sadism set in a mix of S&M clubs, torture chambers and filthy, nightmarish hospital rooms? The game’s protagonist alternately flees from and tries to exact revenge upon a gang hunting him for sport. Players strangle their opponents with phone cords, severe heads, and stab eyes with hypodermic needles. In order to reduce the rating from Adults Only to Mature, however, the game’s producer—Rockstar—did remove the ability to use pliers to torture enemies.

In contrast, the killing in America’s Army, which is distributed for free by the US Army, is clean and bloodless. Unlike Manhunt 2, it has no restrictions on who can play it, and so tweens and teens are welcome to run around gleefully shooting terrorists. They even have an ad campaign showing young men playing the game and then being encouraged by an on screen character to join the army.

We have all heard the complaints that video games are sexist and violent. This is, for the most part, true. But the same criticism applies to books, and magazines, and movies, TV, and advertisements. The values inherent in video games reflect (and reinforce) the values of our society. In Manhunt 2, the player fights in a desperate situation and the sadism he uses against his enemies is a reaction to the sadism his enemies try to use against him. This is the same logic the US government uses to justify torturing terrorism suspects.

Enemies in America’s Army are dehumanized while real soldiers in Iraq are increasingly distanced from the battlefield—killing with remote operated Predator Drones or joystick-operated CROWS machine guns. We are comfortable with war, as long as the victims are wearing exotic garb and our view of them mediated and our soldiers are well protected. Call them terrorists or enemy combatants or collateral damage, but never people. Don’t worry about accurate casualty counts. Objectify the other with carefully chosen words and camera angles. Remember the beautiful night vision footage of smart bombs penetrating smoke stacks in the first Gulf War? The explosions almost looked digital.

Videogames are full of nubile women with porn star proportions because that is the type of woman our beauty-obsessed, celebrity-crazy, reality-isn’t-real-enough culture desires. Women are, by and large, victims or tramps (or both) in videogames. The question is not, “Are video games teaching young men to be sexist?” but “Is society training young men to enjoy sexist games?”

What we play is a reflection of what we believe, what we idolize, and what we demonize. At Playing 4 Keeps we’re trying to help kids understand the full potential of video games as an artistic medium, but even more, we’re trying to help them understand the full spectrum of messages society presents to them, and their full potential to define their own values.

Posted by Jay at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hello everyone!

Following the success of the Virtual Video Project pilot year, I have been busy rounding up new students, new faces for the second year, and trying to get the word out about the program and what it has to offer. After weeks of diligent recruiting, both in-person and online, and months of curriculum development, planning, and more meetings, we have now about 30 teens from 9 different high schools that applied, and that's 10 more than we expected! The other good news is that we have a very nice ratio of female and male interested in the program. I am really excited for the new challenges and goals we've set out for ourselves this year, and we will be meeting everyone for the first time tomorrow.

It's amazing how quickly time flies. Sometimes too fast! I still remember my first day as a VVP facilitator, and meeting the teens at the Museum of the Moving Image, where we held the program last year. We have come so far from that first initial day. The VVP is still very new and in its "raw" stage of development. We are about to embark on our second year, there is still much to learn, many windows of opportunities to explore, and different approaches to engage youths with 21st century media skills. I feel nervous, happy, proud and stressed about the program all at the same time. I am nervous about some of the changes this year, and I am happy about the turnout and the immense interest and support from everyone involved. I am also proud of the students from last year who wants to be a part of building the program and taking it to the next level. I really want to push the envelope with the VVP program and give the teens what they deserve.

Work in progress, I am

On that note, I want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Something extraordinary happened to me today, and will like to share this moment with everyone. For the past year, I have been bounded to Global Kids Island in Teen Second Life. So for the first time, and I feel like Christopher Columbus when I say this, I have embarked on a new island in the teen grid managed by Eye4You Alliance, and participated in the Halloween Dance party with teens there. It was a fabulous time and I managed to take two pictures from the event.

Thank you Mercury Metropolitan for passing on the Pumpkin head

Here's me on the dance floor with teens on the other non-GK island *Gasp*

Here's me standing on top of their meeting room with a giant spider

Posted by tabitha at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Virtual Video Project screening of "A Child's War" took place this September at the Museum of Moving Image. Watch the whole presentation below as teens and staff speak about their experience creating Machinima on Second Life. We are so proud of the teens!!! Many thanks again for the Museum of Moving Image for making this possible.

Posted by Kathy at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The schedule for this week’s D.I.D.I. Initiative Workshops and Office Hours is posted!

If you haven’t signed up for a DIDI workshop yet, there’s still time! Workshops will be held this week on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Come by the South East corner of D.I.D.I. Initiative Island in TSL to sign up!

Workshop Times
Thursday Nov. 1
9am -11am SLT
2pm – 4pm SLT

Friday Nov. 2
3pm – 5pm SLT

Saturday Nov. 3
12pm – 2pm SLT
4pm – 6pm SLT

If you can’t make it to any of this week’s workshops contact Meghan GKid or Amira GKid to reschedule. Remember, in order to be a part of DIDI you must attend at least one workshop in its entirety.

DIDI Office Hours
Additionally, the DIDI Team will begin holding office hours this week to help you plan your Ventures! Come by DIDI's Coffee House to discuss your ideas or find out more about DIDI!


Monday Oct. 29:
1pm SLT– Sally YouthVenture

Tuesday Oct. 30:
3pm SLT – Sally YouthVenture
6pm SLT - Meghan GKid

Wednesday Oct. 31:
10am SLT - Meghan GKid
11am SLT - Yesenia YouthVenture

Thursday Nov. 1:
1pm SLT - Amira GKid
6pm SLT - Meghan GKid

Friday Nov. 2:
12pm SLT - Yesenia YouthVenture
1pm SLT - Amira GKid

Dream it. Do it.
In Teen Second Life.

Posted by Meghan at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week was a big one for the P4K program. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s been a huge turnout for the program. So big, in fact, that we may have to review our applications and select only the best students. The criteria for that selection process, however, was decided not by the trainers, but by the group as a whole. On Monday, the class broke into groups of four or five students, each one led by an experienced GK leader. Each group listed which attributes they thought would make a good candidate, and which attributes would inhibit our group's progress. After ten minutes, the groups presented their decisions

It was exciting to see how seriously everyone took the exercise, and there was thoughtful debate about the issue. When the groups presented, there was a significant amount of consensus on what characteristics GK leaders needed, and which were undesirable. Some of the most commonly named traits were: responsibility, respectfulness, creativity, good listening skills, and energetic. No one wanted to have leaders that were mean, aggressive, disinterested in learning, lazy, or irresponsible. After everyone had presented, my co-facilitator Cristina brought the lesson to a nice closure by explaining that all the traits that had been discussed could be summarized by the three GK rules: One Mic, Safe Space, and Participation.

The following Thursday, the students knew they were being reviewed for acceptance into the program, and it was clear that many were conscious of following the rules that they had decided. We want the leaders to take ownership of the program, to feel invested in it and work to keep order. When we heard students telling each other to be quiet and encouraging each other to participate in the exercises, it was clear that this process is beginning. There’s still a lot of work to do before we have a strongly cohesive team, but the group is beginning to gel. Our group is beginning to understand that Playing 4 Keeps is their project, and it is fully within their power to make it a success. I have no doubt that by the year's conclusion, many of the leaders will have a better understand not just of video games, but of themselves and of community organization.

Posted by Jay at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amira Fouad
October 2007

This month’s reflection has me rolling around the many ideas in my head that somehow seem so intricately connected. I’d like to take a few minutes to share how the many different ways of knowing, and thinking that I’ve been engaged in for the last five years seem to be culminating in this new field of study that I have entered since joining Global Kids.

My graduate work in human rights essentially aimed to question the particularities of individual capacity within society.

What were the identity formations that contributed to an individual’s agency, ability, or inability to contribute to society?

What were the factors that served to politicize entire identities or groups as a result of their identities?

What did the politics of representation mean for an individual’s sense of capacity? And how did those particular politics of representation and socially defined associations impact such things as coalition building, dialogue, politics, and conflict resolution for those groups? As such, my graduate studies in human rights became more about an individual (or group’s) right to impact society, one’s ability or inability to participate within a society’s processes and politics. It was there that I began questioning, How is a right to impact different than the ability to impact? Human rights, then, in my own study, were important because, they were the only measurable way to qualitatively measure such things as agency, privilege, capacity, and entitlement. Therefore, in my exploration of what we refer to as “human rights”, I was more concerned with the closing and opening of political spaces, the phenomenon’s that contributed to the politicization of identities, and the particularly local dynamics that in some form had influenced or been influenced by exogenous forces.

What my graduate research provided me with was an opportunity to unknowingly explore the broad parameters of what Professor Henry Jenkins of MIT refers to as a participatory culture.

In trying to define the interconnectedness of the broad issues and questions that my studies were defined by, I found that it was the qualitative study of human capacity and agency that most interested me. At what point in society did identity and association affect capacity?

When did constructions of race, gender, sexuality, religion, or socio-economics define perspective, association, and in what spaces were such social constructions absent? Does something like race matter online? Or does digital interaction provide a truly open and equal participatory space? Does it matter in terms of access, privilege? In what ways are virtual worlds socially constructed? In what ways do virtual worlds provide an escape from the ways individuals associate or define one another based on their physical characteristics, or language? How is a conversation about politics different between two people in a digital space, where their communication is not influenced by the physical roles of gender, race, or class, that might otherwise influence their interactions? Is a digital space a safer space? What contributes to the inequality of this space? Is human interaction, and human agency, more equal, or any less socially constructed, in a virtual world? And do social constructions define equality or inequality, agency or capacity, for any given society?

Since joining Global Kids, these are the questions that I find myself presented with. I find myself thankful to be able to do the kind of meaningful work that both contributes to youth development and allows me to ask the bigger questions of “Why?”

This is what it means to be a part of a very innovative field and a very innovative culture.
A culture that is very aware that it is on the cusp of a transforming society and aware that is necessary to this time, examine the world in all ways that are un-disciplined. A culture that is ready to consider the different lenses necessary to think critically about the connections and adapt accordingly.

That the very nature of our work is arguing about why new skills like collective intelligence and networking are imperative to societal progress; that a learning community is dependent on such skills and as a result we are at the forefront of utilizing these skills ourselves. Because of this there is this sense of cross-disciplinary collaboration, and of harnessing the ground breaking aspects of this work in a way that is collective. And so when I meet other educators who are similarly exploring the ways digital literacy skills are apparent to our societies, I realize that if any field can successfully steer clear from the types of knowledge production that essentially reinvents the wheel, digital literacy may very well be it.

And finally, that I find that what draws me ore than anything to be a part of this work is that it is evolving in what J.P. Gee would call “affinity spaces.”
This is a learning culture that rightfully applauds every contribution, whether from a novice or from an “expert”; that we are all very aware that there is significant value in our differences in perspectives, our different strengths and assumptions that we bring to our research, our practice, our questions, and that this is what’s necessary if we are going to move forward.

Progress is this.

I look forward to whatever might lie ahead as we continue to seek out new ways of knowing and developing, our youth, and ourselves.

Posted by Amira at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekend I (Rafi Santo, that is. This blog has many authors... ) had the honor of presenting at MIT for a conference titled Teaching and Learning in a Media Saturated World, a gathering aimed at bringing together k-12 educators who care about media literacy. Along with fellow talented GKer Amira Fouad, I was given an opportunity to speak about education in virtual environments, and specifically how these environments, when utilized correctly, are natural vehicles for the acquisition of new media literacies by teens. Thankfully, my presentation immediately followed the keynote of Henry Jenkins [mp3], so the audience of about 30 was well primed in regards to the conceptual framework of new media literacies. I've posted the video of our presentation, titled "Virtual Worlds, Real Skills", below.

Just to warn, it runs for about a half an hour.

For those of you reading this off of an rss and don't see the video, you can find a link to the video here.

If you're interested in seeing the powerpoint on its own, I've uploaded it in parts to Slideshare here:
Virtual Worlds, Real Skills (p1)
Virtual Worlds, Real Skills (p2)

You can also just download the whole presentation here.

"Virtual Worlds, Real Skills" was the first time I have ever presented at a conference period, but was also the first time I shared with a large group of professional peers insights about the work I've been doing at Global Kids for almost two years now. In many ways the presentation felt like something that had been developing since I started working at GK and was just now being reified. At least one segment of the presentation had popped into my mind over a year ago, but all of it was the result of paying close attention to the educational processes we've engaged young people in since we started using Second Life as an educational medium.

And while the presentation was in many ways the result of paying attention to and examining the way we structure our programs, the process of putting it together (something I relished working on in the past few weeks), was illuminating in itself. Since we chose to task ourselves with looking at how our programs teach new media literacies as laid out in Project New Media Literacy's white paper [pdf] on the subject, it required to us to look closely at our programs, see where they each had unique strengths in terms of teaching these skills, and, more importantly, where they could be improved. I never thought of preparing powerpoints as a form of program evaluation, but in a way, that's what this felt like.

We hope to use this as basis for future presentations about the strengths of this type of work, though the foundation that I helped to lay here can certainly be improved upon. We're in process of developing internal as well as student evaluations based on our programs that are aimed at measuring the acquisition of new media literacies, so hopefully the next time we do this presentation, we can provide not just examples but data to go along with it. We also got really good feedback from the Project NML team, present at the conference, about how they thought the presentation could be made more useful for educators.

Overall, I found the whole experience invigorating and gratifying. The audience was engaged and interested, and we got a lot of positive feedback about what we shared throughout the rest of the day. One of the things that became clear from conversations I had with people afterwards was how much they appreciated hearing about a new medium and how it can be used in dynamic ways to educate. This made me feel like we'd actually helped accomplished one of the primary goals of a conference like this: to contribute something substantive to a community of fellow practitioners and a broader field.

Posted by Rafi at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week we began holding our interactive and informative D.I.D.I. Initiative Workshops! So far we have had amazing teens taking part, some old GKers and some great new faces too!
Workshops start in the D.I.D.I. Institute Boardroom where we go over the GK Guidelines and do some fun getting to know you activities!

Here is us playing "Have you ever...." as an icebreaker activity!

Later we go into our brand new workshop room to discuss our interests, passions, and some problems that concern us in our community. Teens in Second Life never cease to amaze me with their intuitive and benevolent natures.
Here's one example of our discussion! We were looking at how we can connect our interests to the problems we wish to solve in our communities by creating a Social Venture.
The amazing mind-mapping tool you see pictured is by Eloise Pasteur on the Main Grid, called the Spidergram. I recommend it to anyone looking to facilitate group discussions in a new, innovative way! You can get one here!

After our participants learn about what a social venture is, they break into groups to plan and present their own mock venture.

That's us using another fantastic facilitation tool, Decka's Pods, also available on the Main Grid by Decka Mah! Groups of participants can be orbited up into space to discuss and plan, while the facilitator can bounce between groups to check in and answer questions! You can get one here :)

Here's me checking in on one of the groups in the sky!

Last, the groups present their mock venture ideas to a mock panel at the Coffee House. They learn what kinds of questions they'd be asked, and are encouraged to think critically about planning a venture.

We are so excited by the ideas we are beginning to see! I encourage all our participants to comment here with the ideas they've come up with!

More to come! See more pictures from our workshops here!

Posted by Meghan at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After almost two years staffing Global Kids work in Second Life, MacArthur Foundation provided us with a platform to reflect on the unique challenges and how things have changed. Read Barry's insightful article below or directly on MacArthur's Spotlight blog here.

Please check it out and post your own experiences and/or solutions to the challenges we all face. Also, to view the open job positions we have listed go here.

Barry Joseph: Staffing the Virtual World

Global Kids’ Director of Online Leadership asks: “How do you hire staff for a medium that most do not know even exists?”

While virtual worlds like Second Life are gaining increased attention - e.g. its virtual appearance this month within episodes of both television shows Law & Order and CSI - most Americans have yet to learn about virtual worlds, let alone work with one.

In the fall of 2006, Global Kids, which traditionally does work with youth in New York City, received a grant from the MacArthur Foundation which allowed us, for the first time, to run on-going programs within Second Life. The job listing was so innovative that Monster.com, the online job site, saw fit to comment upon it:

“Here’s a job you’ve probably never imagined: Developing and running workshops for teens—in Second Life. But thanks to a New York City organization known as Global Kids, someone has the opportunity to do just that… You can also train and mentor others in Second Life and—as the job offer from Global Kids demonstrates—get paid in real US dollars for it.”

Monster went on to say:

“In the online industry, new kinds of jobs are cropping up all the time that simply didn’t exist just a few years ago—corporate blogger, podcasting consultant, Second Life event planner. Yes, I made that last one up, but it will exist before too long.”

And that time is now. Through a second grant from the MacArthur Foundation, to participate in their Virtual Worlds Initiative, we are now seeking to fill four new positions, one being a project manager who is ostensibly an event planner (albeit not for weddings, but to promote international justice).

Nowadays, listings for new virtual world position are not so novel. There are hundreds of educators using Second Life, for example, and scores of non-profits. However, while we were once one of the few guys on the block, today we have fierce competition, and not just from other educators. We just lost a prime candidate to one of the top Second Life development companies, someone who left the NGO community to enter the for-profit world for the first time. Current conditions differ greatly from the early years of the Web, when the .coms were years ahead of the .orgs; this time we entered the starters box at the same time and are often in competition for the same limited pool of experts.

So how does an educational non-profit compete with a multi million dollar for-profit, whose work promises to be just as cutting-edge (but arguably less socially relevant)?

This concern was brought home by one educator who was sending a number of top-notch candidates our way. She reported they were all “the kind of candidates most organizations would flip for” but had concerns about salary working for a non-profit. She wrote they all “wanted desperately to figure out a way to afford to work for GK!”

This is not a new recruiting tool for non-profits: speak to people’s passions. You might earn more somewhere else, but we can feed your soul. Work for us and you’ll love waking up in the morning. And indeed, the dozen or so employees (depending on the month; we’re growing so fast) who work at Global Kids all share in common their passion for their work, using digital tools to develop youth leaders around global issues.

At the same time, as this job market continues to expand, we can model the possibilities for what this work can look like for the corporate types, as reflected in the following comment received in response to our latest job listings:

“I am teaching an e-commerce course at my local college. It would be very good for my students to see that the skills I am trying to impart to them (Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds) do have value that professionals are looking for.”

Choose-Your-Own-Job-Description

When we received our current grant, we realized that there were multiple ways to fill each position and build teams amongst them. We had a rich collection of ingredients but didn’t know which recipe would cook the best meal. We decided to let the best one emerge from the market. But how to add some creative chaos to the job market?

Based on the books we loved as youths, we welcomed applicants to participate in a Choose-Your-Own-Job-Description application process, announcing that:

“We are currently looking to hire three to four people. However, each position contains more than one area of responsibility, all of which can be mixed-and-matched. And who are WE to tell YOU the best combination? Instead, we are looking to YOU to tell US the best combination of responsibilities to meet your strengths and interests. There are eleven possible combinations, each with is own job description.”

By describing three over-arching categories - Second Life Educator, Social Networking Expert, and Second Life Project Manager - we created an opening for potential job applicants to make decisions and drill down towards a final job-description. Do they want to join our staff in New York or work part-time remotely? Do they want to combine the work of two social networking projects or combine one of them with an educational program in Second Life? The decision is theirs to make.

Finally, we decided to leverage resources available to non-profits like ourselves to spread the word - namely by writing this brief “think piece” about the challenges of non-profits filling positions for virtual world employees that you are reading right now. So please help out the underdogs by spreading around this Spotlight entry and then check out our Choose Your Own Job Description.

Posted by joyce at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Ashoka's Changemakers website is holding a vote for Why Games Matter: A Prescription for Improving Health and Health Care and Ayiti: The Cost of Life is one of the finalists! Voting goes til November 7th, so make sure to cast yours.

Help select the top three entries that work to improve health and health care. The three entries that receive the most votes will each receive US $5,000. All finalists will attend the Changemakers Change Summit at the RWJF-sponsored Games for Health Conference in May 2008.

Read more about the competition and vote here.

Posted by joyce at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 24th was an interesting day on Global Kids island, which is where I hosted my first event for Global Kids. For my event I decided to bring an issue that effects the U.S every day, which is immigration. After planing and working on how my event would run, it was interesting and also relieving to see that a good handful of people made it to participate in the event. Among those people were some of the other Global Kids interns which was also great to see support from them. After everyone settled in, I than gave a brief Introduction to what this event was about and what was going to take place. After that, it was finally time to get started, and get those opinions flowing!

To start off the event I wanted to have something that was sure to spark some ideas and also something that made guaranteed everyone interacted with everyone else participating. To execute this I constructed an activity where each group (consisting of 2 people each) would read a story written by people who have been effected by immigration in someway. After that, it was the group's job to come together and give a brief summary of what they had read and to share it with everyone else participating in the event. After each group presented their summery, they were asked to then give their thoughts on the story. Following the group member's thoughts, everyone was encouraged to give their comments on the story based on what the group had presented to them.

As for the stories given to the groups, their were 3 groups so 3 different stories were handed out. The stories used were the following:

Story 1)
I've been here since 1983; I was 6 months old at that time. My mother brought me here from Tijuana, Baja California. I went 10 years thinking that I was an American. One day my mother broke the story to me and my jaw fell. The person that I thought I was, was nothing but a lie. Now 24 years later, my situation is the same. I am an illegal alien from Mexico. I have 3 sisters all born here. I am married to my wonderful wife of 2 years. I owe her a lot, a woman that strong who puts up with my situation are scarce in this world. I feel so bad keeping her from the things she can do... travel, invest, buy a home, have kids. I never thought this could happen to me, but it did and this is the outcome. We've talked to a few lawyers and they all say the same thing; go to Mexico and wait to see what happens. I don t know how I can do that. My Spanish is terrible, I have no family in Mexico, and I can t bear to leave my wife and family. I've strongly considered taking my life so that I could finally breathe without worry, even if it would be my last. All my friends and family travel when they want to and have great jobs. I on the other hand can't find a decent job. The weird thing is that I know what I want and how to get it. But my situation will not let me accomplish it.

Story 2)
I can still remember the sound of the sprinkler pipes - shoo shoo shoo - it was early morning and I arrived in Idaho from Zacatecas, MX in the back of my uncle's pick up truck at the age of 5. It was 1972 and we had no running water in the red box car we called a home. I remember getting on a yellow bus and seeing a bunch of freckled faces with red hair that looked almost alien. I did not speak a word of English but I was excited to go to school. We stayed in the box car for long time until my father saved enough money for our own place.
My mom had four more children all girls who are now incredible women. We all graduated from high school, four of us from college. We have run state and federal programs and provided assistance to many. Today, that box car could fit inside any one of our homes.
Now, I am an advocate in my community because I am not afraid to speak of the worth of my people. I am an American, the product of the American dream.

Story 3)
I am 41 years old and have been in the U.S. for almost 23 years out of legal status. I came here legally under a student visa and lost my status after my visa expired. I have been married and divorced three times to U.S. citizens and none of them have sponsored me. I have two children, and this is affecting my kids, especially when I can't give them the life they deserve because their mother is here illegally. It looks like I will remain illegally in this country until my son turns 21 to actually sponsor me in five years. This is extremely sad, and a hardship for my minor children and me. I have no family except my children. I am pretty much stuck in this country. It is my home, and I will die here some day. I am a very educated person, and have lots of potential if I was here legally.

Once every group gave their summary, it was time to move on to the last part of the event, the human barometer. To those who aren't familiar with the human barometer activity, it is best described as a visual representation of peoples thoughts or feelings on a certain topic/statement. In my event, I said a few different statements that all revolved around immigration. Also beforehand, I set out three prims in a line, all with three different words, Agree/Disargee/Not sure. I then typed one statement i thought up before hand, and had everyone go to the prim that best described how they felt about that certain statement. Once everyone settled down on the prim they picked, I then asked one or two people from each prim on why they choose that side.
The statements read were:
1. Immigration is not that big of an issue in our country, there are more important things we could be worried about.

4. There is nothing wrong with forcing out those people who are illegal, yet are hard working and have lived with their families in the United States for years.

After all the statements were read, we wrapped the event up with an explanation on why the barometer was used and how it is great to use in other learning situations.
After the event was finished, I had a feeling or relief that the event went smoothly, and I was also impressed with the participants, all who added to the event to make it great.

Posted by Mat Brocco - TSL Intern at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is my second month at GK and it has definitely been a great experience thus far. I'm learning about the challenges of recruitment for our VVP program and the competition that we have to deal with. Makes me wonder--how else we can begin to sell the VVP program in order to beat the competition? I think that selling it as a program where students can not only have fun making movies, but can also fulfill their community may help increase our numbers. I noticed that alot of students wanted to take dance classes or they were only concerned with fulfilling their community hours after school.
I've also been enjoying editing the videos, although its fun to see how you can spice things up, I had forgotten what it was like to wait for videos to renderrrr and uplooooad and troubleshoot. Although it has been a challenge I already feel more confident about my editing skills. I also like the fact that I can lose myself in these editing projects and forget all my little worries in life.
I'm looking forward to my first VVP workshop on Thursday. Working with the kids should add some fun and variety to my day. I'm also looking forward to my first conference in LA. that would be a totally new experience for me.

Posted by Kathy at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The blog World Changing's October 18th article by Eleanor Lang focuses on her thoughts on UNICEF and Ayiti: The Cost of Life!.

Read the article below or here.

Game Explores the High Cost of Living in Rural Poverty

When the leaves start to turn and the air becomes clear and crisp, I think about those little orange 'Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF' boxes that we carried around as kids with the same nostalgia others reserve for candy corn. Having been named for a famous humanitarian, collecting change instead of candy wasn't really a choice for me, but more of a right of passage; even though I was a kid, I could still do something for other kids not fortunate enough to live in post-war American wealth. Of course, I didn't understand why some kids didn't live in nice suburban homes or shop at Waldbaums supermarket, but those little orange boxes provided an introduction to the concept of social activism to me and to a generation of children.

Fortunately for UNICEF and the children of the world, the technology of the internet has brought a greater sophistication to the UN organization, in terms of raising both funds and awareness of the conditions many of the world's children live with (although the very low-tech orange boxes are still available.) UNICEF has such a wealth of information on its site that it would be hard for a kid to process it all. This includes a number of games (a bit buried on the site, unfortunately). Some are incredibly simple, illustrating easy concepts for very young children, and some are more complex.

Best among them, and possibly the best game for change I've seen to date is Ayiti: The High Cost of Living. The game, named after the local Creole moniker for the Republic of Haiti, challenges players to discover what it's like to live in abject poverty, struggling to stay healthy and get an education

In the game, the player is responsible for a family of five in rural Haiti. You start by choosing a strategy: health, education, happiness or money, so it's possible to play repeatedly for different outcomes, which may be mutually exclusive. The game includes a great deal of information and the player has four game years, divided into sixteen seasons (four per year) to help the Guinard family confront of the high cost of life. There are different victory conditions depending on the strategy you choose, but if both parents die the game is over.

It's pretty hard not to die. At the start of each season, the player can choose to send family members to school, work within and without the family farm, rest at home or go to the hospital. There are costs or benefits to each activity; for instance, going to the clinic costs money, but the hospital more. Going to work will earn money for the family, but can cause health to fail and might require a trip to the store to buy luxuries, such as shoes; and in order to work hard enough to keep the family going, someone will most certainly get sick. There really isn't a way to educate all children in the family, let alone the adults.

"The high cost of living" is a very apt subtitle for this game, since simply surviving storms and illness is nearly impossible; I've yet to educate some of the kids without ultimately sacrificing, sometimes literally, at least one other. The game was conceived with Haiti as a case study and setting to explore poverty as an obstacle to education, and even many of the jobs available to adults require a basic level of education that is hard to accomplish.

The animaition in Ayiti: The High Cost of Living is simple, with a minimal landscape showing the basic places you can go and giving family statistics for health, happiness and education. Play is a basic point-and-click: you click on the family member you want and click on the place you want them to go, where you have choices about level of work, level of education, and level of care -- each with its own cost. Like other educational games, Ayiti: The High Cost of Living contains lesson plans, links and forums that allow kids to talk about their thoughts and experiences with the game.

Like some other games about serious subjects, Ayiti is difficult to win and can be frustrating to play. Like life in the real-world Haiti, it's hard for a kid to stay alive, let alone flourish. "I thought it would be played in the classroom, under supervision," explained lead designer Nick Fortugno. "Part of the point of the game was that your assumptions about education are shot down in a dramatic way. If I had known that so many people would play it on their own, I might have framed the experience differently, so that people would be prepared for that failure and there would be less of a barrier to replay."

Ayiti is a true collaborative effort, in the very best sense of the term. It's part of Unicef's Voices of Youth site, which is guided by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and which seeks to link children from different cultures around the world who want to learn more and do more about the world around them. It was developed with the input of high school students at Global Kids, a project to teach kids media and game design skills to eventually develop socially conscious games, and designed by Nick Fortugno, formerly of the critically acclaimed Gamelab Studio, and now the Chief Creative Officer of casual game start-up Rebel Monkey. Ayiti: The High Cost of Living was developed with support from Microsoft. It's a great example of what can be accomplished by different people with different talents who all have one thing to say.

This Halloween, my teenage daughter will take her kid sister trick-or-treating. She's too old to ask for candy, but she'll be carrying her little orange box, and if she comes home early enough, I'll sit her down and get her to play a game.

Posted by joyce at 1:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday, Nafiza, a GK leader and intern, hosted an event in TSL that featured Ishmael Beah being streamed live. In coverage of the real life event, the Charlotte Observer published an article on Beah.

You can read the article below or here.

At age 12, Ishmael Beah became a soldier in a brutal war in Sierra Leone.

He was a killing machine, hooked on drugs, who looked at the army as his family.

Thursday night, Beah stood as a 26-year-old, delivering a message of hope to a sold-out crowd at ImaginOn.

The author of "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," appeared as part of the 17th annual Novello Festival of Reading.

Beah's speech was also streamed to young listeners worldwide at teen.secondlife.com. "It's a first for Novello," said library director Charles Brown.

Critics praised "A Long Way Home" as haunting and without self-pity.

Beah says the book came about because of frustration. When he came to the United States in 1998, he met people who didn't know what Sierra Leone was. "If they didn't know it was a country, they didn't know there was a war," he says.

He also wanted people to know about the plight of children in 20 countries who become soldiers. "I also realized that children somewhere in the world were being forgotten."

Here are excerpts from his speech:

• On war: "At this point in time, that we have to kill each other to settle difference rather than sit down and talk is completely ridiculous."

• On his survival: "It was purely by the grace of God and pure luck."

• On the U.S.: "There's a difference in the civil population and its government. For people on the outside, it's difficult to see that."

• Parting request: "Don't ever belittle someone's suffering. That's where (the loss of humanity) starts."

Posted by joyce at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Below are two video's of former GK Staff member, Afi French, discussing the Playing 4 Keeps program.

Click To Play

Click To Play

Posted by joyce at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent blog entry from Play This Thing offers up one of the sharpest analysis yet of the political messages with the game mechanics of Ayiti.

"Cost Of Life is one of the best political web games released in 2006... I'm not sure which was more compelling, the later feelings of success as I worked that dominant strategy, or the early feelings of anguished sympathy as these people helplessly struggled with no way out.

And a powerful comment in response to the blog is also worth noting:

"Because the immersion elements are done well - you tend to like the family members, they are clearly upbeat people who are working like dogs - the game subtly combats the ever more entrenched (American) idea that poverty is always the "fault" of the impoverished."

Read the post and comments here.

Posted by joyce at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Global Kids was profiled in the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers' publication Voices from the Front Line: Profiles of Our Nonprofit Partners, which spotlights an exemplary grantee of NYRAG members each month. This is very exciting, and we are grateful to Brigitte Schmid of the Third Millennium Foundation for nominating us. The profile can also be viewed on NYRAG's web site at nyrag.org.

Posted by joyce at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“You have to find hope in hopelessness itself…the human spirit is enormously strong,” were the final words I heard from Ishmael Beah as I exited Second Life. Although he related it to the war in Sierra Leone and his missing family, it is a powerful statement that we can all relate to and incorporate into our own lives. Unfortunately, I could not stay to hear the various questions people had for Ishmael, but I did have wonderful help from fellow TSL residents who filled me in on the questions presented to him and his elegant responses. I am getting a little ahead of myself though, but I just wanted to begin with that quote because it really left a wonderful and lasting memory.

Let me start at the beginning, since it is after all the most convenient place to begin. Hello! I am Nafiza, or Nafiza GKid. First thing I should clarify is that I am NOT an adult; I have the last name GKid because I was brought into Teen Second Life by Global Kids when I first joined their Virtual Video Project program. Currently, I am a Global Kids Intern on TSL and my very first ever online-facilitated event was this one, in which Ishmael Beah was streamed into TSL on the Eye4You Alliance island (10/18/07). I joined this program because…well there are several reasons. The most obvious is because I feel strongly about global issues and love seeing other people’s perspectives on these issues. The other reason is that…I wanted to have this experience—not for a resume or a college application—but for myself. I think that if I can prove to myself that I am capable of doing something, then I can prove it to any other person in the world.

Another part of it is that I have facilitated a workshop in the GK Annual Conference, so I did want to see what it would be like to do something like that in Second Life. Trust me when I say, that although you have to concern yourself with public speaking and expression in real life, dealing with some of the messes that can occur in Second Life can be somewhat more frustrating. At the same time, it is much easier to “brush-off” misbehavior on SL than it is to do in real life. The one thing that makes doing this in SL so hard is getting people to stay active, interested, involved, and to keep their attention. Also, I think they were very anxious to hear from Ishmael that they became impatient and also frustrated/bored when I was doing the screening. I can’t say that I blame them because it can be pretty boring to just sit there and watch someone typing. I tried to ask them questions to keep them engaged though, I don’t know how much it helped, but they seemed to respond very quickly and well to the questions so that was a good sign. One thing I can say for sure is that they did enjoy and they were somewhat mesmerized by Ishmael while he was speaking because they responded to all the things he said. Some times in awe, after hearing the reality of war, and sometimes with applause for his elegant words. Although they did not have the same privilege as I did to meet him in person, I think they still understood him to be the warm but strong individual he is just by hearing his voice and words. Lee Soothsayer commented that the event was “deep and very informative”.

I did meet Mr. Beah, while he was doing a book-signing at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. It would be impossible to sum up all that he expressed, and how very inspiration he is. He did express that he, through his book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier”, wanted to reach out to the humanity within people instead of just depicting war, because that would just advocate war and glorify it.

I suggested the topic of child soldiers when we were brainstorming ideas for the movie we were going to make in the VVP program because the movie “The Invisible Children” inspired me. However, in the beginning I was unsure if that would be a good topic because we did not really have any idea to what the individual experiences of child soldiers were, and if we had depicted something incorrectly it may have become something very controversial. I may have felt concerned about making a machinima on the topic, but at the same time…I really wanted to learn more about it because I felt as though it was a major human rights violation (and a children’s rights violation on top of that). Initially, I went to meet Ishmael to further research the use of child soldiers, since he was a primary resource. However, after meeting him, I felt…that touch of humanity. I was disgusted by the reality, and intrigued by his strength and capability of reminisce upon something so devastating. At the same time, meeting him bridged that huge gap there is between New York and Sierra Leone. He truly made “child soldiers” come alive for me; before meeting him…they were innocent victims I read about on paper…it is so much different when that person that is depicted fighting on paper is in front of you explaining how the war had an impact on him. So, meeting him gave me new hope and determination to continue making our movie on child soldiers and see it through to the end. To tell you the truth, having him as a guest speaker, basically made this my dream event—and the fact that I had the opportunity to facilitate just made it that much better (and nerve-wrecking).

My part in the event was basically to facilitate the beginning until Ishmael Beah was introduced and then everyone would just listen to him and ask him questions if they wanted to. So, the process was not hard. The only thing I was concerned about was time. I knew I wanted to wait at least five minutes after the schedule time in case people came in late, but at the same time that only gave me 25 minutes to go through my part of the workshop. My part of the workshop was to show “A Child’s War” but before showing them the movie, I did want them to have some idea about what a child soldier is and where they exist. I thought it was important to teach them that so they have more respect towards Ishmael Beah when he speaks. Also I wanted them to know more about him before they listened to him speak so there would be less confusion. The event listings go in increments of 30 minutes, so we could only make the event start at either 3 or 3:30. Of course, I could have told everyone to come in at 3:20, but that would be an odd time expectation for an event. However, one thing that I was extremely impressed with was that the majority was either on time or early. I guess you can say, “Oh well all they have to do is press a teleport button and they can be there on time, unlike in real life when you have to take transportation to get there”~ but there are other obstacles present when a computer is involved. For example, sometimes I open up my web browser to do some research but once I see the headlines from some news stories I get completely distracted—and that is something that can easily happen while using Second Life…so I was very impressed by the fact that everyone made it there on such good time.

But trying to manage the time was kind of hard for me, especially since my timing had to rely so much on Ishmael’s time of arrival and in order to know when he would arrive I would have to rely on Saryn. I want to thank Saryn Fanwood for relaying the questions from the teens to Ishmael Beah. Also, I would like to thank Mercury—and I really have no idea how to thank him because he has been so much help. It is really thanks to him that this event came together, since he helped me proofread, promote, set up the event and followed through with everything. Rafi, of course, I have to thank him for first giving me this opportunity and for making it possible. He not only gave me the opportunity to facilitate, but so many teens the opportunity to be inspired by the story of the former child soldier. And of course…what would I do without all of people who actually attended the event? I expected~ roughly 5-9 people to show up because no one really knew me so I did not expect them to show up to an event with my name on it. But we had so many people show up that it was exiting and slightly intimidating. I am very grateful to all the teens that showed up, and the Lindens as well, because they were very supportive and cooperative. So thank you all! Oh and I almost forgot, Ishmael Beah (although he may never see this random blog by some girl he probably does not even ever remember meeting) is very much to thank as well; if he had not agreed to be streamed then maybe people would not be as likely to show up to the event. So thank you!

So, I think I have talked about me-me-me enough! I know there were MANY people who could not attend the event because of time zone issues. I myself could not stay to the end because it was getting late and I had exams and homework for the next day to complete. So, I can understand how some people felt like they missed out. So~ while Ishmael Beah was speaking, I took some notes so I could share them with everyone. In addition, I also had help from Mariel and Rafi who filled in the blanks from the last 20 minutes I missed.

My Notes:
He initially used writing to take out his anger, and later went onto talking about his country. No one even knew Sierra Leone, and people began to know more about it because of the war. He explained in his book, how he felt during the war. He did not want all the suffering of all the children to be forgotten, which is why he wrote the book even though it is a hard topic to talk about. He said that people have a romantic view of war, but it is anything but romantic, it just kills and destroys life. Many people find reasons to justify war, but the real purpose is to kill other people. It’s ridiculous to go into war, and kill each other, instead of sitting down and talking it out. By dehumanizing others, you in turn dehumanize yourself, but many people do not want to believe that. He read a excerpt from his book about the first time he returned home after it had been wrecked by war. When he came back, at the time he was only 12 years old, he heard women cry, shirtless children crying because they had been orphaned, dogs abandoned, his grandmothers village was deserted. A man, who tried to escape, had his entire family shot by the rebel groups. As a child, Ishmael felt terrorized as he passed towns and villages because they feared he may be a child soldier. They had to find hope in every little thing. Hope that their parents were alive. No choice but to join the military groups, it was a join or die situation. If you did not carry out the commands the military commanders gave you then you will be killed, so if you were told to shoot someone you had to shoot. As time passed, he became close to these people (the child soldiers and adult ones) like a family. If he only wanted to write about just the war, he would glorify the violence, but just writing about them would not stay with people—and would not see the humanity behind the war and see what happens to people who are affected by war. He wanted a common humanity.

Rafi Added:
Question Posed to Ishmael: What are things in US culture that are dehumanizing, just as being a child soldier in Sierra Leone was?
Response: Things in US - gang violence, poor and destitute neighborhoods, juvenile centers are also extreme circumstances, such punitive messages in the US as opposed to rehabilitative measures. In Sierra Leone, when someone stole something from a person, the punishment was to work with that person on a farm for a number of days. So the punishment was to repair that which was damaged, and this is not the case in the United States.

Question Posed: What can people in this country do?
Response: Expose themselves to the world! But he cannot tell you what exactly your contribution should be, but support international standards to prevent things like this from happening.

Mariel’s Notes! (I am quoting most of the things others said because I do not want to tamper with it and potentially change meaning of something because of misinterpretation)

“I [Mariel] asked, ‘What do you think of the fact that most people know about Sierra Leone is related to war? Now that you live in the US, how do you see Sierra Leone?’ He answered that he went to Sierra Leone one year ago and, after all that he went through, he could see the land was ‘in his veins’ (he didn’t say it quite like that, but I forgot the exact phrase) - after all, it is a very important part of his life. He also said that the fact that people see Sierra Leone only as a country where war takes place is real just because of the fact that people are unwilling to see it otherwise (he mentioned TV people specially). Also, in the answer he gave before he said that life in Sierra Leone goes on, and that he’s actually seen some people in Sierra Leone who are happier than many people in the US.

Someone from the audience asked what must be done about it. He answered that, so far, the action taken against the issue hardly involve rehabilitative measures. He says that people aren’t really doing something to fix the problem, as what needs to be done is repair what’s been broken rather than isolating it (people). More specifically, he said that governments must work in the implementation of what’s being agreed and also must engage the governments that aren’t directly affected by the problem, or that just don’t take it seriously. Also, governments must pay attention to the set goals, and make sure that they hold the guilty people accountable for what they are doing to children. As of actions that can be taken by individuals, he said that the very first step is to expose oneself to the world and learn about the issue itself, where it’s taking place. Using that as a basis, find out what you can do (and there’s no universal law for that as each people have to find out what their own contribution will be).

Specifically, to answer the ‘US people’ bit, he said that the US government gives military aid, so what people can do is be in touch with their senate by sending letters of points the representatives have to take into account. He mentioned the specific case of a document in the HRW website, encouraging people to print it out, sign it and send it to the Senate. He also said he has a foundation.

He was asked about his family. He said he tries to convince himself of the fact that they are still alive, but that they must probably aren’t; if they were, they would have contacted him already.”

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So overall, it was a great event to run. Now I know I have to make my next event even better because now the starting standards have already been set high! But I will try my best to make my next event more interactive and as fun as possible. I am sorry if you could not attend, but I hope compiling some of this data helps you get some idea of what he was talking about. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or send them to me! You guys can find more pictures on flickr!

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Times have changed for this week’s workshops. If you haven’t already, come by the South East corner of the DIDI Island in Teen Second Life to sign up for workshops happening Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday of this week!

Thursday Oct. 25
8am-10am SLT
1pm-3pm SLT

Saturday Oct. 27
11am-1pm SLT
4pm-6pm SLT

Sunday Oct. 28
1pm-3pm SLT

If you can’t make it to any of this week’s workshops contact Meghan GKid or Amira GKid to reschedule. Remember, in order to be a part of DIDI you must attend at least one workshop in its entirety.

Dream it. Do it.
In Teen Second Life.

Posted by Amira at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Playing 4 Keeps program finished its third week in Canarsie on Thursday, and it’s more popular than we ever hoped for. Twenty-seven students came out last week, a mix of relaxed, capable juniors and seniors, and enthusiastic boisterous freshmen and sophomores. Many of the students are avid gamers, and some are also budding illustrators—creating their own manga comics from stapled together notebook paper. We deffinately have the right mix of skills to make this project a success this year.

On Monday we played Gonzalo Frasca’s excellent Madrid Game. Everyone worked hard for a half hour trying to devise strategies to win the game. In the discussion afterwards, you could almost hear their brains humming. The initial comments were frustrated, but as we moved from thinking the game was “really hard” to understanding it was intentionally impossible, the potential for serious games began to sink in. The students had nuanced comments about what a never ending game a