Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

Below is a reposting of an article from MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning, in which Connie Yowell asks: What can we learn from young people about why they find virtual worlds so appealing?

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action. This term came to mind as I read through Barry Joseph’s post—Comparing apples and oranges in virtual worlds. The recent simulcasting of an extraordinary speech by Kofi Annan into four different virtual worlds certainly provided an opportunity to think about virtual worlds and how young people use them. I came away from the event most struck, perhaps, by the size and quality of the discussion held in Whyville. Over 180 young people attended the event in Whyville, creating streams and streams of thoughtful chat discussion. Quite extraordinary really. What is it about the norms, practices, adult roles and other such affordances of this space that is so appealing and engaging for young people? More importantly perhaps, is if we cast aside our adult expectations and standards, what it is we can learn from young people about why they find this virtual world such an engaging learning space?

These are the kind of questions that form the basis of MacArthur’s grantmaking in Digital Media and Learning. What can we learn from young people about how to use digital media to support learning? What do young people have to tell us about the shape and future of learning environments in the 21st century? As research begins to emerge and as we observe the extraordinary engagement of young people in virtual worlds such as Whyville, Quest Atlantis and others, we have begun to form a tentative list of the kinds of affordances we see in environments that support learning. So far, we see the greatest engagement in those environments that allow young people to pursue a need to know, to share, to produce, to make their thoughts and productions public, and to develop a specialized language.

These are just a few tentative ideas that are emerging and are offered here simply to stimulate discussion. We think they are useful because they focus on the experience of young people in these environments rather than on the technology. In the posts that follow, I have invited a few of our colleagues to share their thoughts on the affordances of virtual worlds.

Posted by joyce at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On April 23, 2008, 39 youth in Teen Second Life participated in the 2.5 hour public forum, "From Myspace to Hip Hop: New Media In the Everyday Lives of Youth." It addressed how digital technologies and new media are changing the way that young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life, presented by Common Sense Media, the MacArthur Foundation and the Stanford University School of Education.

As is common in Teen Second Life, Global Kids facilitated processing questions during the live video stream, encouraging youth to respond to the content of the video and relate it back to their own lives. The following are some of the highlights, addressing such topics as:

• On MySpace, Facebook and Parental Restrictions
• On Socializing in Teen Second Life
• On Second Life and Homophobia
• On “Kiddy” Virtual Worlds
• On Showing Their Second Life Avatars To Friends and Family
• “Hip Hop is the Web 2.0 of the Streets”

Continue reading "[conf] Teen Residents on the From Myspace to Hip Hop Symposium" »

Posted by Barry at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Below is a post from the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning blog in which Barry Joseph writes about Comparing Apples and Oranges in Virtual Worlds.

Global Kids reflects on lessons learned from a massively multiworld simulcast of Kofi Annan’s receipt of the MacArthur Award for International Justice.

Not all virtual worlds are created equally, even those with the greatest potential to host educational content. On March 20th, Global Kids hosted the first massively multiworld simulcast across four virtual worlds, bringing a live speech by Kofi Annan after receiving the first ever MacArthur Foundation ‘s International Justice Award to Second Life, Teen Second Life, Whyville, and There.com, not to mention the web.

To see what I am talking about, please watch the brief video below:

Continue reading "[In the Media] Comparing Apples and Oranges in Virtual Worlds" »

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This was the location of the live stream from the event. In a few days, the footage will be posted online and available from this location. Thank you for your patience.

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On April 1st, the 110th Congress Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing entitled Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium.

Listening to the testimony, it was hard not to imagine what I might have shared were I asked to testify. It might have gone something somewhat like this:

Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Stearns, and Members of the Subcommittee, we at Global Kids are honored to have this opportunity to share our experiences as experts working with youth and virtual worlds.

To provide background, in 2006, following extensive research into the educational potential of virtual worlds, Global Kids became the first nonprofit to develop a dedicated space for conducting educational programming in Teen Second Life (TSL). Specifically, Global Kids is conducting intensive leadership programming for youth, bringing students from its New York-based programs into the space, and streaming the audio and video of major events into the world. This work has received significant funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, among others, and been conducted in partnership with many other organizations, including UNICEF, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the International Criminal Court.

I would like to begin my testimony with a quote from an earlier Congressional Subcommittee hearing that took place just over a half-century ago.

“Formerly, the child wanted to be like daddy or mommy. Now they skip you, they bypass you. They want to be like Superman.”

This testimony from Dr. Fredric Wertham on the connections between comic books and juvenile delinquency, and his earlier publications on the matter, helped to stoke a national hysteria around the lurid dangers of this once new medium. While barely a decade old, more than 90% of children between the ages of six and eleven read comic books, as did over 80% of teenagers. Parents in the Cold War era, unsure how to handle a variety of new social forces, found a convenient scapegoat in the colorful and ubiquitous magazines. Wertham’s testimony helped the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency hold comic publishers’ feet to the fire and led not to new regulatory policies but a new industry-administered code of conduct that shaped comic books for over thirty years.

Generation after generation seems to go through its own “cycles of outrage,” whether with the waltz, pulp novels, comic books, rap music, or most recently with video games and online social networks. New mass media come and go, gaining relative acceptance or falling by the wayside, but concerns about the safety of children and regulations surrounding their freedoms never go away.

Virtual Worlds, practically non-existent just a few years ago, are just the latest commercial media to be seen as “colonizing” the lives of youth, once again raising a variety of concerns about their impact. The growth of youth involvement with virtual worlds is predicted to surpass 50% over the next few years, so one can expect a number of concerns to be raised about virtual worlds that are similar to the mediums of the past--a threat to law and order, a threat to traditional learning, and a threat to traditional values.

Continue reading "[staff] My Testimony For Congress (had I been asked)..." »

Posted by Barry at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The following is our recording of one of the many AERA panels held this week in NYC, this one specifically on:

Learning, Meaning, and Civic Engagement in the Digital Age:

The MacArthur Digital Media Initiative

• Participant: Henry Jenkins (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)


• Participant: Howard E. Gardner (Harvard University)


• Participant: James Paul Gee (University of Wisconsin - Madison)


• Participant: Nichole D. Pinkard (The University of Chicago)


• Chair: Constance Yowell (J.D. & C.T. MacArthur Foundation)

powered by ODEO
Download audio here.

And, a great excerpt from the larger file in which Jenkins discusses virtual worlds as places of role play and experimentation and situates Global Kids programs as models of using virtual worlds for civic engagement.

Download audio here.

I see virtual worlds as spaces of thought experiences where people can imagine other possibilities than the literal institutions and identities that we are stuck with in this world.

My own experience in High School was that my identity was fixed even within two weeks of entering, that I was going to be the social pariah, and the only question was whether I got out with any amount of dignity left or if I was going to be completely emotionally crippled in the experience.

If I had a place where I could be powerful and assert myself and show my leadership, and my intelligence and my creativity and get recognition from other people through it -- that would have been a hell of a difference for me going through it. And it makes a difference for a lot of kids in this country, now who are caught in that same situation.

So I look upon “identity play” in this world like carnival, in the medieval sense.
Medieval worlds where thick social relations were suspended and where people stepped outside and tried on other identities, and new relationships; moreover in some degree that was emotional release (and social control mechanism), and some degree it was the beginning of social uprising. In my hometown Boston, the people dressed up like Native Americans and dunked tea in the harbor -- that was carnival practice turned into real world politics. Historically, carnival was something that people used to imagine the possibilities and act on them in the real world.

We can judge yet whether the young people are going to be using virtual worlds to imagine institutions that will be more humane or more open to creative and intelligent invention and in route to the real world or if they stay there.

The different is that carnival in medieval terms was a ritual of a few and getting ready for it was a weeklong practice. Now we have carnival existing in parallel reality to us all the time. The temptation to live in carnival most of the time must be very great, especially for kids whose High School experience was anything like my own.

But the challenges is how to generate that out. That’s why organizations like Global Kids really excites me, because they are working in Second Life and developing educational projects which bring young people together to talk about real world issues and the real world penetrates into Second Life and Second Life spills back over in changes they are making in their communities. The model of citizenships that Global Kids represents seems to me a powerful way of thinking about that parallel reality; in a way that makes differences here, in the world that we are going to live in eventually.

Posted by joyce at 3:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month in the DMYA, we had a visit from videographers and producers that are putting together a documentary on the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative. It was a great opportunity for the youth in the advisory to both have their voices heard about what they're actually doing online, as well as to display their skill in speaking and thinking critically about their relationship to digital media.

After this, we asked everyone to create their own maps of their digital lives, which was a really fascinating process, and one in which we all got to learn a lot about the different ways the group relates to digital media. I've included some of the maps below. Enjoy!

Continue reading "[dmya] Youth Advisory maps their digital lives" »

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Online Leadership Program – Online Community Developer/Content Editor

Global Kids Inc., a New York City based non-profit organization dedicated to transforming urban youth into successful students and global and community leaders, is seeking to fill a short-term freelance position as Online Community Developer/Content Editor, to be filled within our New York City offices or remotely. The position will run from mid-March until end of June.

The Online Community Developer/Content Editor will work with staff at Global Kids to create the structure and content for a new social networking site called “RezEd: A Hub for Virtual World Educators.” This project is designed to provide educators using virtual worlds with access to the highest quality resources and research in the field, and to use the most effective technology to establish a strong network of those using virtual worlds for education. RezEd features will include podcasts, newsletters, best practice documents, contributor blogs, an event calendar, job postings, resource library, listserv, and other social networking functions.

Responsibilities of the Online Community Developer/Content Editor will include developing the content and technical strategy for the site and managing the production of both up to and soon after the site launch. The Online Community Developer/Content Editor will also work in collaboration with other GK staff on educator outreach and the production of podcasts.

The Community Developer/Content Editor will collaborate with Global Kid’s rapidly expanding Online Leadership Program (OLP) in New York City, where the position will be based. Global Kids is on the cutting-edge in developing best practices in the use of virtual worlds for supporting global youth leadership and its Online Leadership Program has grown in one year from three full time to a dozen employees.

This is an excellent position for someone interested in online community development, journalism, education, and social computing tools.

The ideal candidate is tech-savvy, resourceful, creative, and a team-player who possesses the following capabilities and experiences:

• Website development experience.
• Strong writing and editing skills, preferably as a journalist.
•
• Ability to quickly learn new knowledge and concepts.
• Experience with Web 2.0 and social networking tools.
• Skills in developing and managing collaborative relationships, networking with institutions and other collaborative partners.
• Confident encouraging busy professionals to submit content.

In addition, we prefer a candidate with:

• Knowledge of virtual worlds
• Knowledge of the education field, particularly technology-enhanced education
• The ability to take initiative.
• Strong communication, writing, organizational, and computer skills.
• A short learning curve around new digital and Internet tools and applications.
• The ability to work remotely with others.
• The ability to manage multiple streams of net-based interactivity and communication at the same time.
• Ability to work within a fast-paced, distracting environment.
• An efficient multitasker.
• Strong interpersonal skills.

More information about Global Kids work in Second Life can be found at: olp.globalkids.org and searching “holymeatballs” on YouTube.com.

Application Deadline:
March 7th, but the hire might be offered as resumes arrive.

To Apply
Interested candidates should apply via email and email alone. Email resume, cover letter, work sample, a writing sample to olpjobopenings@globalkids.org (either as a zipped or stuffed file) with “RezEd position” in the subject line. We encourage applicants to pay particular attention to the cover letter, addressing why the candidate is interested in the position, poses the required skills, and what role it plays in the narrative of the candidate’s career path. In addition, please let us know where you learned of the position.

Global Kids, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to a policy of equal treatment and opportunity and do not discriminate against employees or applicants for employment on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, citizenship, mental or physical handicap or disability, marital status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. We continue to support and promote equal employment opportunity, human dignity, and racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.

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The winners of the Digital Media and Learning Competition were announced today and our project, the Virtual World Educators Network was one of 17 exciting new MacArthur Foundation funded and HASTAC administered projects.

The Virtual World Educators Network will be developed to serve as an online hub to promote the use of virtual worlds as rich learning environments. The participating community will share best practices, encourage dialogue, provide access to the leading research, provide podcast interviews with community leaders, and feature the latest news on learning in virtual worlds.

Outpouring for interest in the grant was intense, with over 1,000 proposals submitted. There are some amazing projects that were chosen and we are proud to be one of them. Congrats everyone!

The official announcement is below, you can also find out more details by going to the Digital Media and Learning site.

17 INNOVATIVE PROJECTS TO SHARE $2 MILLION IN INAUGURAL DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING COMPETITION

Chicago, IL (February 21, 2008) – A mixed reality game for high school students in Los Angeles and Cairo to learn about the real-time impact of air pollution in their neighborhoods. A web application that aggregates news and nonprofit needs, where every news story is linked to real-world actions that users can take. A mobile musical laboratory that allows students to explore new ways of making music with laptops and local area networks. These are three of the 17 projects that will receive up to $238,000 in funding as part of the first ever Digital Media and Learning Competition funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and administered by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). Selected from a pool of 1010 applications, the winning projects are expected to produce promising innovations in the use of digital media for formal and informal learning.

“The ubiquitous nature of digital media has profound implications for learning that we are only just beginning to understand,” said Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “An open competition was an excellent way to inspire new ideas and collaborations, and the amazing number of applications we received speaks volumes about the untapped potential in the field of digital media and learning. The 17 winners represent the best thinking from many disciplines and professions working to harness the power of the web for learning, and we look forward to the insights they will provide.”

Continue reading "[press] Announcement of winners of the Digital Media and Learning competition" »

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Yesterday, to celebrate the two year anniversary of Global Kids in Teen Second Life, with the support of Linden Lab, we held the first ever press junket to the GK Estate and announced the launch of three new projects.

View the chat log of the event, including the presentations about new projects from GK staff and those of D.I.D.I. Venturers too after the jump.
We announced the first four round of grants in the D.I.D.I. Initiative and heard from the youth receiving funds to create their own social ventures around health issues (partnering with YouthVenture and funded by Robert Wood Johnson), announced the upcoming Philanthropy in Virtual Worlds program focusing on global human rights and conservation issues (funded by the MacArthur Foundation), and did a virtual ribbon cutting on our new science island established to host our new high school science class (partnering with the High School for Global Citizenship and funded by the Motorola Foundation) and held a dance party to celebrate.

It was very exciting to have so many journalists and prominent SL bloggers present to hear from both us and TSL residents about these upcoming projects.

View photos from the event.

The first reporter to "file" his report is Adam Balkin, from NY1, the Time-Warner news channel in NYC whose content is broadcast around the country. The text can be read here or you can watch the news clip below.

As other reports come in, we will post them below. Thank you to everyone at Linden Lab who helped to support this event and everyone along the way who offered inspiration.

On January 9th, I hit my two year mark here at Global Kids. To some, I know this sounds like a short amount of time, but to me, it's an age. To begin with, working in GK's Online Leadership Program means that we're in a field that's moving at breakneck speed. The contours of the new media landscape are shifting beneath our feet. Every month feels like six. We've been both nimble and (definitely) fortunate enough to ride this proverbial wave, and so our team has grown and projects shifted an enormous amount as well in the short time that I've been with GK.

With so many great projects moving forward, it's rare to get a moment when you feel some real closure before moving on to the next thing. But in the past month or so, I've had another great milestone occur in my time here, aside from my two year mark. In late December, MacArthur announced the release of its Digital Media and Learning Series, six volumes which include writings by authors specializing in gaming pedagogy, online identity, youth civic engagement through digital media, and more.

Continue reading "[staff] Coming full circle at Global Kids" »

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As part of MacArthur's Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning, Barry Joseph pens an article that was the basis of the speech he gave at the recent online event Philanthropy and Virtual Worlds: Considering Civil Liberties.

In this article Barry forecasts upcoming work by Global Kids that explores the potential of virtual worlds within non-profit, learning, and philanthropic communities.

Read the full article here: Barry Joseph: Planned Activities for Virtual Worlds and the Public Good

Posted by joyce at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week brings the exciting release of two papers that were written based on findings during the 2007 Second Life Community Convention in both the education and non-profit focused panels. They were authored by two prominent SL community members in both fields and feature numerous references, quotes and work being done by various educators, virtual world professionals and non-profits within Second Life and other related spheres.

We are proud of the papers and welcome you to download them, share with your colleagues and leave comments.

Support for these reports was provided by the Digital Media and Learning Initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We thank them and all who helped contribute in some way to the publishing of these documents.

The first paper in the Global Kids Series on Virtual Worlds discusses common themes, methodology and best practices in education in virtual worlds and concludes with recommendations.

Perhaps reflecting the unique and collaborative characteristics of the virtual platform itself, the Second Life educational community has distinguished itself as being remarkably collegial and generous in sharing both knowledge and resources with colleagues across boundaries that have traditionally not been crossed. Rather than adopting a silo mentality of research and practice, many educators routinely construct knowledge and discover best practices with colleagues in different disciplines, schools, institutions and countries. A higher education instructor in California may advise a middle school teacher in Saudi Arabia. An independent e-learning professional may offer instructional space to a virtually landless university professor.

This collaborative spirit is reflected in the principles and best practices gleaned from the Education Track at the recent Second Life Community Conference held in Chicago, Illinois in August 2007. A representative cross-section of Teen, Higher Education, Corporate and Government presentations reflected both common instructional strategies in maximizing a virtual world environment, as well as examples of tailoring that environment to best help specific learning populations.

Download the paper here.

Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life – Fall 2007
prepared by Rik Panganiban

The second paper in the series includes key recommendations for non-profits on education, outreach, collaboration, fundraising and advocacy.

Well-heeled patrons sip martinis while bidding on shimmering gowns to raise funds for cancer research. A humanitarian aid worker just back from Sudan talks about the plight of Sudanese refugees to an international audience. Regulars at a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting sit in a loose circle, helping each other through another day of sobriety. Teenagers are creating sets, costumes and lighting to shoot an educational video about child soldiers in Uganda. Pretty normal non-profit activities – if not for the fact that all of these events took place in the virtual world of Second Life.

This report is a preliminary examination of some of the best practices of non-profits active in Second Life, inspired by a series of discussions that took place during the “nonprofit track” at the Second Life Community Convention in August 2007 in Chicago. This past year Second Life has become a testing ground for exploring the possibilities of using virtual worlds for the social good. Given the fairly recent entry of many non-profits into Second Life – many non-profit offices are under one year old – these findings and recommendations are very much subject to revision. Indeed, we consider this just the beginning of a much longer conversation about what is the role of civil society, philanthropy, and the public sector writ large in the virtual world.

Download the paper here.

Continue reading "[Conf] Announcing release of two papers in GK Series on Virtual Worlds" »

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Contacts: Jonah Kokodyniak, Global Kids, 212-226-2116, Jonah[AT]globalkids.org
Tom Mariam, Mariam Communications, 914-939-4294, Tom[AT]mariam.biz

For Immediate Release:

Media Offered Unique Opportunity by Global Kids to Experience Teen-Only Space of Second Life

Journalists Can Observe Projects on Education, Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy

New York, NY, January 15, 2008 – Journalists from around the world will have a rare chance to get a first-hand look at the teen-only space of the popular virtual world, Second Life (TSL), through Global Kids Inc. (GK), a leader in the use of new media to empower youth.

Global Kids, now in its third year of conducting educational programming in TSL, is conducting the first invitation-only press tour of the teen-only space of Second Life on Wednesday, January 30 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. EST.

Journalists can participate either by coming to the Global Kids office in New York City or remotely. Interested reporters should contact Jonah Kokodyniak (212-226-2116 or jonah[AT]globalkids.org) to reserve a spot.

The special press tour will highlight three of Global Kids’ most exciting new projects:

• The launch of a Motorola Foundation-funded Science Through Second Life class at the High School for Global Citizenship in New York City.
• A $40,000 commitment from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create health-related youth-run social ventures.
• A series of competitions linked to MacArthur Foundation international program areas.

Continue reading "[Press] Media Offered Unique Opportunity by Global Kids to Experience Teen-Only Space of Second Life" »

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Project NML and the DMYA

This past meeting the Digital Media Youth Advisory got to meet with our friends and co-grantees under MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, Project New Media Literacy. Project NML is part of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, which put out an incredible white paper (pdf) about participatory culture and media education.

We spent about two hours with them talking specifically about the skill of networking, which is defined as "the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information". As Project NML puts together its new website and works to integrate online activities that could be done to build specific skills, a lot of what they're considering is not only how to teach those skills, but also how to do so in a way that's accessible and interesting to teens.

Devante evaluates different data visualization sites

We looked at websites that related to the skill, specifically ones that dealt with data visualization. First we checked out Many Eyes, a website that allows user to upload data sets and have them visualized in different types of graphs, and then we visited a site that was really well received by the teens called We Feel Fine, which aggregated instances of statements about how people are feeling from throughout the blogosphere, and then visualizes them in a variety of engaging ways.

The meeting was apparently quite useful for Project NML, and they even sent over this nice note:

I just wanted to formally thank you for giving us the opportunity to work with the Digital Media Youth Advisory a few weeks back. Working with that impressive crew was just another reminder of what a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and insight resides in the minds and words of our young people.

Though we only had a few hours to work with this group, it only took a few minutes to see what a truly impressive crew it was. What I think was most remarkable was the respect they brought to the room, not only in how they treated each other but in how they approached the task we put to them—their responses to the material we showed them were both considered and considerate, and they expressed a clear and deep understanding of their role within a larger community. The specific suggestions they provided, and the confidence and poise with which they provided those suggestions, will help us immensely as we move forward with our project.

Again, thank you so much for giving us the chance to work with this terrific group of teens. The experience was unforgettable.

Go DMYA!

Posted by Rafi at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.”

Download the full article here.

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The six MacArthur volumes of their Series on Digital Media and Learning are now available, and the DOZENS of chapters are each available, for free, for download. Go MacArthur and MIT press! The Global Kids Leaders in the Digital Media Youth Advisory contributed to the process by providing inspiration through essays and other media, helping to vet the initial abstracts, running an hour-long workshop on youth voices for all of the editors and authors, and doing research on specific topics for a number of the authors.

Info on all six volumes: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/dmal

Download Barry's chapter: Why Johnny Can't Fly: Treating Games as a Form of Youth Media Within a Youth Development Framework

An abstract of his chapter follows:

In this chapter, I use anecdotes and case studies from both work and personal experience to make an argument for treating games as a form of youth media and explore what this means for after-school youth programs. I talk about my son. I talk about a hotdog stand. I talk about two after school programs in which youth make or use games to engage with serious global issues. I explore the creation of Ayiti, a game about poverty in rural Haiti, and what it meant for youth of color to take part in its creation. I explore a teen program in the virtual world of Teen Second Life that created a maze to educate their peers about child sex trafficking. I discuss James Paul Gee's Situated Learning Matrix, the digital literacy theories of Henry Jenkins and the perspectives of other key thinkers in this volume and in the field to explore their implications for media literacy and youth development programs. The chapter concludes by talking about 21st Century Skills as a context for situating games-based learning and references Carol Channing's voice as a source of hope.

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This past Friday we had our monthly meeting of the youth advisory, during which we really delved into the process we started last month of creating a series of teen focused workshops on issues related to digital media. The driving question behind the development of these workshops: What do teens need to know about digital media usage that they do not?

Over the past half-dozen or so years, Global Kids staff, most of which work on the ground in New York City public high schools, have come across all sorts of new challenges in regards to our students' use of the internet, cell phones and games. From figuring out ways to circumvent blocks that schools put up for certain web sites to socializing in what often seemed like imprudent ways on sites like MySpace, it was clear that some discussion and education, for both staff and teens, needed to happen. And while the Online Leadership Program conducts educational programs that use digital media and often (though not always) have teens actively reflecting on many of the social issues surrounding digital media usage, this is only a fraction of the teens we work with on the ground.

So this year, we decided to start on the process of developing a core curriculum that directly addressed these issues, and that could be taught in afterschool programs at all of our school sites across this city. Rather than come from the top down in developing this curriculum, we figured it best to start with the teens themselves, and who better to go to than a youth advisory on digital media?

In the last meeting that we had, we began the process by brainstorming a myriad of topics relating to digital media usage that the teens felt could be included in this series of workshops. This month, after narrowing down that large list, we began the research process into four broad areas:

Protecting yourself online – Socially
How can teens:
- Recognize email scams, credit card phishing?
- Deal with ‘cyberbullies’, ‘griefers’ and online troublemakers?
- Protect themselves from sexual predators?
- Know when and how they can safely use credit cards?

Protecting yourself online - Technically
How can teens:
- Safety surf the web?
- Avoid viruses, hacking, popups, spyware/malware?
- Know how to deal with an infected computer?

Piracy, File Sharing, Remixing and Fair Use
How can teens:
- Know what intellectual property is, and why it's important?
- Know when it's ok to download content (music, videos, software) from the internet?
- Know when something is copyrighted?
- Create intellectual property of their own and determine how it will be used?
- Advocate for their own right to fairly and legally use the copyrighted material of others?

Credibility
How can teens:
- Determine whether information they find online is credible and accurate?
- Know where to go to find accurate information?
- Recognize and differentiate between amateur and expert content online?
- Understand how website design factors play into their own process of determining whether something is credible?

By the end of the workshop, we had some incredible facts and resources relating to these areas, and are working to compile them into a research base upon which both the Online Leadership Program staff and the youth advisory will work from to synthesize factsheets and activities that can be included as part of workshops. Can't wait to see how this process develops!

Check out some pics from the workshop:

Ross gets the facts on credibility!

Nafiza and Jean brainstorm about what the potential dangers are for teens that don't know how to protect themselves online from scams, cyberbullies and predators.

Posted by Rafi at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

An excellent overview of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative is now available from Education Week (both in print and online). Global Kids machinima program is mentioned, as are overviews of a number of other projects. As MacArthur is now officially a year into the project, it offers an excellent check-in.

Projects Probe New Media's Role in Changing the Face of Learning
By Andrew Trotter
Published Online: November 30, 2007
Published in Print: December 5, 2007

Online multiplayer games that immerse teenagers in scientific challenges and social networks designed to spark their creativity are among a range of research-and development projects that the MacArthur Foundation has backed since it launched its its digital-learning initiative a year ago.

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation committed $50 million in October of last year to a five-year initiative to understand how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. ("Funder Seeding Work in the Emerging Field of 'Digital Learning,' " Nov. 15, 2006.)

The initiative so far has awarded about $23 million in 36 grants to lead researchers and their organizations, most of them universities. John C. Cherniavsky, a senior adviser for research in the education and human-resources directorate at the National Science Foundation, said the initiative may have catapulted the MacArthur Foundation to the forefront of funders supporting research in educational technology.

"They're a major player," he said. "They might be the biggest funder, depending how you count the money."

Though some projects reach well beyond schools, they are relevant to the future of public education, said Constance M. Yowell, the foundation's director of education. Schools are like the middle of a sandwich that is falling apart, she said. Flanking them are industry and pop culture, on one side, and digitally adept children, on the other, both moving forward at an unprecedented pace.

"Way behind, in the middle, are the schools," Ms. Yowell said in an interview. "That disconnect is a huge problem that is part of the problem of the disengagement of young people in schools."

MacArthur's work complements research underwritten by his agency and the U.S. Department of Education, Mr. Cherniavsky said. "Their support is probably less encumbered bureaucratically, with less intensive reporting requirements and auditing than the federal government," he said.
Immersive Environments

Continue reading "[dmi] Education Week Article Features Global Kids" »

Posted by joyce at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A PUBLIC FORUM on how digital media is changing how young people learn and play, featuring:

Henry Jenkins, Professor, MIT, and author of Convergence Culture, will talk about his latest work on media literacy and skills young people need for the 21st Century.

Katie Salen, Professor, Parsons the New School for Design, and game designer, will discuss the new public school based on design and games she is opening in New York City.

Howard Gardner, Professor, Harvard University, and author of Five Minds for the Future, will talk about the ethical implications of growing up online.

A reception will follow:
Upstairs on the Square, 91 Winthrop Street, Cambridge, MA 02135
www.upstairsonthesquare.com

Hosted by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to celebrate the publication of the MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning. The panel will be introduced by Jonathan Fanton, MacArthur President, and moderated by Connie Yowell, MacArthur's Director of Education.

VIEW LIVE STREAM:
We will also be streaming this event live to the web. You can view the live broadcast during the event here.

Supported by:

The MacArthur Foundation's $50 million digital media and
learning initiative aims to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations. The initiative is both marshaling what is already known about the field and seeding innovation for continued growth. For more information visit www.digitallearning.macfound.org.

One of the largest American university presses, The MIT Press publishes important scholarly books and journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. With a long-standing commitment to distinctive design and the creative use of new technologies, The MIT Press publishes innovative research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge as well as comprehensive works that contribute to a foundational understanding of their fields.

The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE) is an educational non-profit organization committed to improving access to education. Its mission is to help meet society's need for access to effective, high-quality educational opportunities in an era of rapid economic, social, and personal change.

Posted by joyce at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Motorola announced this past week the recipients of their new Foundation Grants program. Global Kids was picked as one of the recipients with our proposal of creating further virtual world focused curriculum, this time spotlighting teaching science through virtual worlds.

Read the press release below or here.

Continue reading "[press] Motorola Foundation Grants $3.5 Million to Inspire Next Generation of Inventors" »

Posted by joyce at 2:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14th, at 6:00 p.m. PST, Barry Joseph will be presenting as part of What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds? conference being held at the University of Southern California.

The LIVE SIMULCAST of this event can be viewed on the Web here.

Additionally, this event is being live simulcast into Second Life at Annenberg Island and Teen Second Life on Global Kids Serious Gaming sim.

We will post additional information and coverage of the event below as it comes in.

Here is a videolog taken over the course the day by Barry Joseph, in which he asks everyone he meets: "When you hear the phrase virtual worlds, what comes to mind?"

A transcript from the Second Life live simulcast event that took place in he Annenberg sim. Of interest is the discussion that took place after the event.

Full video coverage of the presentatio below or view it here.

Click To Play

From MacArthur's blog, Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning comes a post by Connie Yowell entitled Week’s Theme: Posts by Forum Panelists (re: Virtual Worlds and Learning), which overviews the forum event. The post also has links to further information and thoughts by each panelist that presented.

• Anastasia Goodstein:
  Learning In Virtual Worlds
• Doug Thomas
• Yasmin Kafai
• Barry Joseph:
  Using Virtual Worlds to Foster Activism Through Youth Media

Other press and blog coverage of the event:

• from C/net news.com's site: What kids learn in virtual worlds
• from the NCS-tech blog: What are Kids learning in Virtual Worlds? A MacArthur Foundation Panel webcast

Posted by joyce at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Friday afternoon Barry hosted an open house and job fair in our Global Kids office space in the main grid. We had a good crowd that showed up and almost all stayed for the hour long talk and question and answer session. There were many questions on the various positions that Global Kids is currently looking to fill. The transcript of the event is after the click.

We also are encouraging anyone who attended or others interested in furthering the conversation by adding comments to this post.

Continue reading "[SL] A Successful Open House" »

Posted by joyce at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You are invited!

As part of the job search to fill a number of positions within Global Kids Online Leadership Program (OLP), we will be holding an open house and non-profit career fair this Friday within Second Life.

When:
Friday, November 9, 2007
4-5 PM (EST) / 1-2 PM (SLT)

Where:
Second Life main grid at the GK office space in the NMC campus sim Teaching

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching/211/164/25

Additional information about available positions can be found at http://globalkids.org/?id=73. The application deadline has been extended to November 15. Feel free to check the status of positions or ask questions here: http://tinyurl.com/2dfrrd.

We look forward to meeting with possible candidates this Friday - see you then!

Posted by joyce at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We've officially begun our third year of the Global Kids Digital Media Youth Advisory, one of the more unique programs we offer in our Online Leadership Program. Whereas other GK programs aim to educate and activate young people, this program is actually looking for young people to inform and advise us and the MacArthur Foundation in regards to its $50 million Digital Media Initiative which it launched last year.

This year, we started on a number of projects. The first was having the DMYA help develop a survey that all Online Leadership Program students will take at the beginning and end of this year to help GK assess how their skills are changing as a result of being in an OLP program. See some pics below of DMYA teens testing out a draft which they later gave feedback on:

Jurrel evaluating his digital literacies

Later in the meeting, we started brainstorming ideas about issues that teens encounter in their digital lives that they would be interested in having GK trainers address in workshops throughout the NYC schools we work in. Some of the topics they came up with were privacy and safety online, appropriate parental limitations on computer use, credibility and evaluating sources, and dealing with cyberbullying and other forms of online harassment. There's a lot there, hopefully we'll be able to work together to figure how some or all of these issues can be addressed in a GK workshop.

Thanks to all the teens for your valuable feedback and ideas!

Posted by Rafi at 12:24 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)

Global Kids will be taking part in an upcoming MacArthur sponsored event entitled "what are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds?" The event is open for anyone to attend and details are below. See you there!

Wednesday, November 14th, 6:00 p.m.
Davidson Conference Center, University of Southern California
3415 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California

• What are kids really doing in virtual worlds?


• How are they learning?


• What does this mean for parents and educators?