[press] The Parent's Paper spotlights virtual worlds and education
The January issue of the New Jersey magazine The Parent Paper, has an article entitled "Student's Try a Virtual World", which spotlight's both the programs Global Kids and Ramapo are running within Second Life.
They quoted Barry several times regarding TSL.
“Once we went into Teen Second Life, we found things we didn’t find anywhere else. In Teen Second Life you have a spatial relationship with others around you and it feels like you are with people. We could do the same workshops for kids virtually that we were doing in reality.We could do these workshops in ways that we never thought were possible. In Teen Second Life you don’t have to just imagine you are in a factory – you are in a factory. And teens are building the factory. A lot of our top down approach for spreading information was met equally with ideas from the bottom up. The space is about putting young people in charge and giving them tools. What we are able to do as educators in that space is tap into nascent leadership skills.”
The article goes on to mention CONSENT! And our Playing 4 Keeps program, our TSL interns, along with our upcoming science curriculum and the DIDI Youth Venture program. The only thing the article got weird, is a misquote on the number of sims owned by educators…he would have never said 3,000. ;)
“When you are using Second Life you are going into the youth media space. It’s our youth’s playspace and is our workspace. We can’t force ourselves into their world, or them into ours, we have to work together.”
