[IDT] Ready, Set...Dig Tanzania!
In a little over 72 hours, I Dig Tanzania will be officially underway! With much excitement and anticipation, the teens at Global Kids in New York and at the Field Museum in Chicago will come together in Second Life to “dig Tanzania” along with the international research team currently in the field in Tanzania. Over four full days in the virtual Ruhuhu Basin, Tanzania, this team of 19 teens will travel, research, dig and construct fossils becoming virtual paleontologists. During this time, the teens will also explore the sites, sounds, and politics of daily life in Tanzania. This will be the adventure of a (Second) lifetime!
Last weekend, the New York teens participating in I Dig Tanzania met at the American Museum of Natural History to get to know one another and begin our exploration of our ancient fossil friends. After hours of exploring dinosaurs, synapsids, and modern mammals of Africa, we all left with some new facts as well as lots of questions we hope to answer during IDT. I really enjoyed getting to know each of the participants and am now even more eager to spend the next week getting to know everyone better before we embark on our journey to Chicago to meet the rest of the IDT team in non-avatar form!
As the curriculum nears its final stages of development and the last safari hat is designed, my excitement is met with many questions I am anxiously awaiting to see the answers. The I Dig Tanzania teens will be working in five research teams made up of teens working together across cities. I wonder how the teens in New York will work alongside their partners in Chicago to share ideas, debate, and create their own fossil from their ‘finds’. This challenge and opportunity makes me all the more excited for the program participants, researchers and staff to meet in person in Chicago in less than a month now. As with any technology, we are relying on many separate parts to run smoothly as one, from satellite phones and modems in rural Tanzania to twenty computers logged in to Second Life for hours on end, Skype calls, instant messages, and projectors. No matter what the challenge may be, the potential to unite three time zones across the world to explore together the past and present in real time will be a reality in just a few days! I look forward to working with this amazing group of teens, staff, and researchers along the journey as well as sharing our findings with you!
