Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

We recently received a very interesting email:

I am the Games in Learning project officer for Education Queensland which is part of the Department of Education, Training and the Arts (Queensland, Australia). We currently have a Machinima pilot project operating in three schools.

Our local newspaper, The Courier Mail, is creating a double page spread about Machinima and has asked me to assist with developing content for the page.

They'd like to feature information about work students are doing with Machinima internationally. Could we have permission to use a screenshot from the video A Child's War for the double-page spread?

Well, of course! Below is the part of our student's film and click here if you'd like to download the entire page about teen machinima.

Posted by joyce at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the Virtual Video Project afterschool program our groups finished writing the main story and we practiced our scenes . One thing that I learned is that it's hard to come up with a scene when you don't have enough information. So always have true information to write something to a story.

Posted by VVP Jamila at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we went bowling on Tuesday during Spring Break and it was GREAT! I emphasize GREAT because it was truly awesome! While we were bowling, I ended up meeting new people from GK. It was great, I never knew that GK had so many programs! It was exciting because it was good to know that just as we are working on our machinima, there are people who are working through another way to get a message across the world!

That Tuesday was so much fun, we should do it more often, I think. Lol.

Posted by VVP Yessenia at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This was my first time going bowling, and learning how to bowl. Thought it was easy, and I wasn't the only one who was bad at bowling. One thing that I learned is that there are more programs that are out there in GK that I didn't know about. One thing that I wish we will succeed in is finishing our project about discrimination against education.

Posted by VVP Jamila at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by VVP Sabina at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Friday, Tabitha invited me to attend the PodCampnyc Conference in Brooklyn. At the conference, I was highly nervous to introduce myself as VVP student on behalf of the others in Global Kids. I barely understood much what the educators there were chatting about, but I pretty much understood that they're trying to find better ways to educate students they work with, including themselves. I was selected by Tabitha, and I enjoyed my time to be with Tabitha at this conference to represent Global Kids to the educators and others attending. As I was highly nervous, I tried my best to support her. The good thing was that most people at the conference were very interested in what she was saying. Most of them didn't know about this online game called Second Life, but most of them were interested in how we use it. Some educators were asking me questions about VVP, and I answered them. After the conference we had lunch, Tabitha paid for me. This was a great opportunity, thanks!

-Matt

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

The 2nd OLP Symposium was great! Compared to the first, I thought it was really exciting; however, I don't know if I am the right person to judge because in the first symposium the Virtual Video Project was in semi-working mode to complete what we were working, which later was used to screen at the museum. Then again, I think everyone enjoyed it at the bowling alley even if we weren't good bowlers.

Continue reading "[vvp/teen] The 2nd OLP Symposium!!!" »

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay…how do I start this...
As I remember, I came into the GK office at around 9:10am, I was early so I waited for staff and students to show up. Then everyone came and the trip to the bowling place was fun. I have played along with Jamila and Sabina. Bowling was funnyt, hehe. At bowling, we assigned 5 players to one lane. I was with Nafiza, Yessenia, Michael and another cool friend from P4K (I forgot his name). This was my first time bowling! So when I tried it, I played well for a first-timer, but then in the second round I didn’t do as well, I kept missing those cone-shaped pins...
Then after bowling, as a group we went back to the office and introduced ourselves, and the programs to others I’ve never met before. It was fun.

Matt

Posted by VVP Mathew at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just want to start off by saying that the NYLC conference in Minneapolis was outstanding. At this conference I learned a lot about youth empowerment and youth being able to change the world. I never knew that there were so many youth out there in the world trying to make a difference in our society. Being in this conference made me realize that although we have many organizations in the USA, there should be more youth trying to make a difference so that we can have a better future.

There were many organizations from Minneapolis that was just fabulous. In these organizations these youth wrote songs, used media, games, etc., on how we as youth today can make a difference for others in the world. As a youth I was very impressed on what they were doing. One of the things these youth did was to try and raise money for children in other countries who does not have any opportunity for better education or other things that they may need to survive.

Located inside the conference hall, there were many booth exhibits. Each was on something different to help create a brighter future. For example, one of the of the booths represented youth donating clothing to children in other countries with HIV/AIDS. At this booth, there were plain white shirts and different types of pants. Youth and other people at the conference was able to create and style clothing for these wonderful children in need. Every booth dealt with different things to help children around the world to stay healthy and succeed in life. Some booths had creative things to do and some were just informational.

Continue reading "[vvp/teen] Youth can change the world" »

Posted by VVP Tarana at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One reason why I want to tell a story today is to make people believe that things are happening in front of our nose and we are not seeing things happening, like racism. And if no one stands up for the problems that we are seeing everyday in different countries, the issues would never be solved. Another thing is to make sure everyone gets what we are trying to say by demonstrating true action!

Posted by VVP Jamila at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The GK conference was really fun and exciting. The start of the conference was one of the most exciting part of the conference that I will remember, because so many people came up to talk. I got to meet and hear Carole, the Founder of Global Kids. There was also a show by students that included many historical and political facts from different countries. The music and dances in this show was awesome. I saw how dedicated the kids were, and how much they wanted to make their point clear to the audience. They did an amazing job!

Posted by VVP Brian at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This was the first year I attended the GK conference, and it was great! It’s just a shame that I won't be able to attend next year being that is this my senior year, and I will be attending college next year. But while it lasted, it was fantastic! The entertainment was awesome and I loved the fact that the performance was very diverse. My first workshop was the introduction to politics and I met many GK members. After the first workshop, we had lunch (it was great, by the way.) In our second workshop, we learned about the media and how things are presented according to how people want it to be seen and, sometimes, not the way things really are. The conference was just great!

Posted by VVP Yessenia at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week we worked on our project, which is about discrimination on education. One thing that I learn from my research is that there are many people who can't go to college because of their skin color, and this happened in Florida. Because of the color of their skin, they did not get accepted to the college they applied to.

Posted by VVP Jamila at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well last Thursday, I led about 40 minutes or so of the workshop. Basically I showed them Alex Chan's "French Democracy" machinima, and asked the group a few processing questions. I guess in the beginning I panicked a little because I really did not know what the workshop was about nor did I have a copy of the actual workshop. But, it wasn't too hard to ask questions that were relevant to us after watching the movie. I spent a lot of the time going over the story, and what techniques were used. I thought it was more appropriate for us to discuss that in depth because it will most likely come in useful to us when we are filming and editing. But yeah, the worst part of setting up everything was getting the right dongle and speakers to work. Otherwise, everything went pretty smoothly.

Continue reading "[vvp/teen] Making a Story!" »

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't explain how I felt, but it was pretty interesting to be there. Everyone came with great energy that everybody in the conference. Everybody cheered to every speech and performances, especially the great performances. It was awesome! I also saw one of my friends from VVP, and we all had a great time...although I was a loner....T_T

- Matt

Posted by VVP Mathew at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I attended the Global Kids Annual Conference on April 4. It was really fun. We got free bag and lunch. We stayed until 4pm. There were two workshops that I participated in. One was in the morning and one in the afternoon. There were different facilitators. For entertainment, there were some performances including an Indian dance. It was fun to work with different students from different schools. My day was awesome.

Posted by VVP Sabina at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well once again, it’s crunch time. It's time to make all those details that need to be made in order to finish our machinima. It's a little ironic that just yesterday I was looking back on some of my old blogs from last year and complaining about having to make these decisions, and I was also talking to someone from last year’s program and I came to the realization that it's almost been a year. Also, in a couple of months I'll be in college. Isn't that amazing? Anyway, I just thought about how much time has control over our lives, which it really does. If you think about it, time can change your life entirely. You could be born 1 minute after some other person but if you are born at 12:00AM on January 1st you might lead a completely different life because you’re born in a different year!

But that's enough of my ranting. I think if we will have any difficulty completing this machinima it will be time constraints. I know for myself, say for example I am making a layout, I can sit in front of my computer for hours perfecting each and every detail; however, in VVP we only have about an hour and a little bit to finish as much as possible. In order for that to successfully work out, it will take complete concentration and focus every moment we are in the program. The problem is, we are not superhuman creatures, or you know, a super-bot. However I do have faith that we can collaborate (or well...that's a hopeful idea, we most likely have to just make compromises), and through this we can produce something that we can be proud of.

Continue reading "[vvp/teen] Decisions, decisions..." »

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

My experience from the International Justice Award event was quite impressive, walking around in an expensive hotel. I was a little uncomfortable since I am financially from a lower class from what I can see. What I have learned while participating in this event was that everybody was in spirit, as Kofi Annan made his speech, it was a little intense, but he joked sometimes. While Kofi Annan was speaking, I was commenting what type of food we were served. I didn't like the fish. Haha. But it was fun! I wish I can go to something like this again to learn more about these type of events.

-Matt

Posted by VVP Mathew at 7:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday, four VVP participants, and myself, had the extraordinary opportunity to see Kofi Annan accept the MacArthur Foundation's International Justice Award. This event was held at the gorgeous Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The event started off with a panel of experts speaking on international law and justice. There were so many people at the event that we had to go to the overflow room to watch a live stream of the panel. I thought the panel was great because the speakers were experts in their areas and also they left time to take questions. In the overflow room, they handed out index cards for us to write our questions down. In the other room, they had a microphone on both sides for people to come up and present their questions.

After the panel, everyone from VVP was sitting outside of the overflow room, when we saw Ishmael Beah! Well, I was too afraid to go up to him and say hello, well it was more like…there was no way I could gather all my thoughts in time to figure out what to say anyway! So yes, when he looked our way and smiled and waved hello at us, I just sat there and smiled back. Anyway, I guess this will be fun to look back on.

Between the panel and the dinner, we had some time to just look around the hotel and take pictures together. It was pretty fun going around the hotel, especially since it's such a beautiful place.

Continue reading "[vvp/teen] Kofi Annan accepts MacArthur's International Justice Award" »

Posted by Nafiza - TSL Intern/VVP at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)