Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

My name is Vladimyr and since early April I've been interning with NYPL's teen central on Global Kids' Playing 4 Keeps program. When I first showed up at teen central, everyone was all over the place. But once everything had gotten settled and planned out, the sessions just went by. When we started talking about the game we wanted to create and what should go in it. The gamers(KIDS) just had fun with it, putting in their thoughts, and making it a great atmosphere for everybody. I don't call them kids, I call them gamers. Because they are truly fans of great games, they love great games, and I can truly say that I haven't been around this much gamers before in my life. I tweeted about the day we had to make our own mini game out of chosen objects. That day showed how much fun they have at teen central and the creativity they have, especially working together. I think the best session I've been to was when the guys from Large Animal gaming company stopped by. The kids had finish picking there topic for the game and actually drew pictures and made a storyline for it. A member of teen central named Dominique had to pitch it to the guys who stopped by because the other kids who helped wasn't there. He did a great job and the guys liked it. The gamers at teen central ended up picking Genocide as their game topic. Barry Joseph helped me get this internship because I had nothing to do after I had graduated high school. I would like to thank him and say that being at teen central was probably the best way I've could of spent my free time. I plan on being at the conference on the 27th, cheering teen central on. GOOD LUCK!.

GKID VLAD.

Posted by p4kvladimyr at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've finally finished filming and editing the film! It took us several months to make it, but we're officially done! I think we've done a good job. The film is loaded with facts and research. We'll be screening it officially next month, and I can't wait to show the world our hard work! :D

Posted by VVP Megan at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow... who knew that the word I used in a brainstorm would turn out to be the title of our whole video project! I'm really excited to get some publicity and I'm really proud of all the work we all got done.

WarriorGal

Posted by vvp JessyJo at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

hi ^_^
Guess what!!! We're done with the movie; after all of the hard work we have done we finally finished. Everything is put together and looks great, we have music in some scenes which put those scenes together very nicely. The music being used is very catchy and the story is easy to follow, which makes me think that people are going to like the movie. OUR HARD WORK IS FINALLY GONNA BE SEEN!!! =]

Posted by VVP Linette at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Up to now we have been furiously working on the finishing touches on the video, reviewing it every session, we are making our way to the perfection we seek. Getting ever closer to the premiere of the movie at the Sony Center. I am very excited to see the showing, and I cannot wait to see how the audience will react to it.

Posted by VVP Yuzo at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't believe how far we've gotten. All this time we've spent on this movie. I just can't wait to show the world. I really hope it puts a strong message on sex trafficking. I'm really glad to have entered the program and for all of these times are great =]. I can't wait to see the expressions on everyone's face.

Posted by VVP Evin at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finishing the movie was a great experience. It has been even better than before and believe the movie will be the best one yet. Every time coming to GK has been great and meeting people from different schools, working together for the finale result has proven that teens can work together with technology without getting distracted by things like music, videos and games.

Posted by VVP Christopher at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I want the movie at Sony to be real fun. I want for my friends to enjoy it and have a good time. I'm looking forward to the next movie and I want the whole world to see the movie.

Posted by VVP Luis at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So VVP is done with the movie. We still need to edit some minor things but for the most part we're done!! The screening will be July 1st. I think the movie overall is pretty great. I think the experience was great. I can't believe it's June 2. I wish I could do another movie with VVP next year!

Posted by VVP Kimberly at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

YAY! We're finally done with the movie.
I'm pleased that even though we rushed, the message of the movie was not disrupted.
I was kind of worried that in a large group, we might not get as much done, but I was wrong.
I really think that this movie, while it is not too serious, document-like, it still sends a clear message to the viewers.
Hopefully, in the next four sessions that we have left (T.T), the footage will become clearer.
So all of you should watch our movie, "Discovered". It's about child-sex trafficking victim, Thalia, and her journey and unfortunate experience in the child-sex trafficking industry that is worldwide.

Posted by VVP Christine at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With all my time here I've met tons of people. People I've come close with and worked with also. With all the time we have spent on this program it's been fun. When we leave from this program I will truly miss everyone here =]

Posted by VVP Evin at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello Everyone,

During the last couple of weeks I have been on the filming crew. The filming process is intense, the main reason is because people become very frustrated when Second Life has lag (even though it didn't bother me much ^_^). There is one scene in particular where we had so much lag that everyone was just laughing, it was the scene when the swat team was invading the brothel.
I prefer to film because I get to see how everything would look in a rough copy and like to see the ending result after people finish editing it. I consider it hard work but I actually don't mind it because it is worth the end result (also someone has to do it =]).

Posted by VVP Linette at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can't believe the VVP movie is almost done. It feels like yesterday that we were just discussing the topics. Time definitely flies by very fast. The movie is going to come out absolutely amazing; I can't wait until July 1st to see the final outcome. The issue of human trafficking isn't very publicized; I want to see if our movie actually has an effect and whether or not people will actually do something about it.
Not only has VVP been amazing but the what Global Kids has given me throughout the year, has been, too. The National Service Learning Conference in Nashville, Tennessee was awesome. It was one of my favorite trips. Because of the annual conference and retreat, I met a lot of new people. I plan on continuing with Global Kids next year!

Posted by VVP Janet at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're almost done with our movie on child sex trafficking! Basically, we're done with the intense editing and right now we're just tweaking whatever we've got. It's a little frustrating when we've got to redo some audio or re-shoot some scene in Second Life, but all-in-all, it's totally worth it! This has been the greatest experience of my life, like... ever!

WarriorGal

Posted by vvp JessyJo at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This new movie we're working on is turning out to be really fun. We were each able to have our own part in the creation of the movie. From editing the scenes to being the actors themselves, we all have a hand in the process. The filming was a complex process even though it might look simple on the outside.

I had quite an experience with the movie making process. The editing was a hard part because of the amount of work needed to make the scene as perfect as possible. The filming was also a great experience, as I was able to get into a position where I had to cue the various actors to do their parts in my scene. Also being the actor is very fun, being able to watch your character be filmed then see them from a different angle in a more cinematic view is quite a pleasure.

Overall the movie making process is quickly coming to a close, and hopefully our premiere of the movie will generate many positive views on our movie. It is a little bit of a shame that the many viewers of our movie will not see the large amount of work behind the scenes that we have done, but it is still a pleasure to see that our movie is coming together.

Posted by VVP Yuzo at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the first time we got to get the whole film done. The whole movie was hard to make because of the whole editing. It was a killer, do this and do that. Even fix this and fix that it was such a drag. i hated it but, in the end it made the movie great. it was something I never did before and I would do it again.

It was a hard job to do but in the end I couldn't do it without my friends. They had help me move along on this long program. I think without them I couldn't move alone and I would never get anything done so its great to have friends to help :)

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

On Thursday, the VVP teens finally finished filming our scenes for the movie. It took so long to shoot one scene. Second Life kept crashing while we were filiming so we had to hope and wait to get started. Filming isn't easy but it was fun. Now we have to finish editing all our scenes and add sound effects and other stuff we need.

Posted by VVP Kimberly at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi, my name is Viveca and I am blogging about my Human Rights Map. This project is about events around the world that violated the rights of humans. I did mine on the Genocide in Rwanda, a tragic event that took place in 1994 during April.

I used three types of media: a photo, a video, and an article. I used the photo to show my audience the pain and aftermath of the genocide. I used the video in order to show people what the Rwandans went through during that blood-soaked month and I also used the article to give readers some text on the events that occurred that month. I chose this topic because I knew a lot about the genocide and I felt as though I should do a map about it.

While doing this project, I was able to get some more info about the genocide and why it happened in the first place. This project sort of made me sad at first because of all the tragedy and agony that surrounded this horrific event.

Posted by Viveca - GKm2 at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi guys! I am doing a blog about the Prospect Heights Campus Wikipedia Page. Basically, the whole Media Masters club took pieces of the school's information such as its racial make-up, its historic background, the schools inside of Prospect Heights, and other bits of information in order to make a page about the school on Wikipedia. We were split up into partners so that we could work on gathering the information in the different categories. Me and my partner Krystal were working on getting info about the racial breakdown of each of the schools inside PH. I really liked doing this project because it allowed me to learn more about the school I'm currently attending. This project also allowed me the chance of helping contribute to the creation of our personal website and I was very happy to be a part of it.

Posted by Viveca - GKm2 at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is so difficult to understand sometimes. Like the times in math class, I know the teacher is explaining problems correctly, but I can't understand a word she is saying. Numbers have never been my thing. if I'm feeling pressured I just can't concentrate. When I'm getting instructions for editing a scene, it kind of goes in one ear and out the other sometimes, so I have to ask the GK adults to explain again. I hope I get the scene right today.

Posted by VVP Helen at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tabitha had 20 tickets to the Mets game, so i tagged along with her and with some GK kids, Megan, Jessy Jo, and Abraham. On our way into the subway, we met up with Tabitha's boyfriend, Tom!! He was very friendly. Then when we got to the stadium, Tabitha's other friends came.

This was my first time going to see a baseball game so I was very nervous. When I saw the field, my eyes popped! I thought it was a painting at first. The game was exciting and I can't believe there were so many home runs.

Thanks Tabitha for buying us fries, pretzels and bringing us to the game!!! :D

Posted by VVP Helen at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During my last vvp session this past Friday, one of my trainers Tabitha invited all of VVP students to a Mets game! She had extra tickets and was generous enough to share the joy. Even though I'm more of a Yankee fan than a Mets fan, I was excited to go because it was my first baseball game, ever!

I had a blast at the game, and before we left, we all got to sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game with the crowd. I enjoyed seeing all of us singing and just having a good time.

WarriorGal

Posted by vvp JessyJo at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

%
52 to 48 was the best project that I had to do. The best thing is that my picture had to be online so other people could see it... people from around the world. I like the fact that other people had to come sharing their work online, sharing their feelings about what they think about the election. Everybody came up with a way to show their feelings, some people had babies, people kissing, fathers and sons. The amazing thing thing is that everybody should a strong feeling about the election, everybody states that 52+ 48=100.

Posted by Monel - GKm2 at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey!! So last year I produced a radio documentary on what I love the most..chicken!! But its more than just me talking about my love for chicken. I drove into the investigative journalism world and tried to uncover the origins of the stereotype surrounding African-Americans and chicken. I dont want to tell you too much about what's said and what I found out because I want you to listen to it yourself but its worth the listen. Let me know what you think!! Thanks!!

http://www.wnyc.org/radiorookies/shortwave/kaskazi.html

Posted by Amana GKm2 at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Conference at Massachusetts was amazing! They had people from different places sitting together learning about Global Kids Media Masters and other types of media workshops. The best part of the trip is that we went to a Afghanistan restaurant couple blocks to the hotel, the food was delicious, the hotel was splendid but I was a little unhappy because we could only stay for one night but I totally enjoy that night. My favorite part of the Conference is that I had to tell people about Media Masters, it felt really great and I enjoyed learning about some other part of the workshops like Wikipedia.

The fun part was that I was asking people questions about the conference. One of them was What are you expecting to gain from this conference? It was really fun coming from Brooklyn, New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm very happy and thankful that Rafi and Shawna and Global Kids make their decision to take me on that trip it was wonderful. Thank You

Posted by Monel - GKm2 at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello again.

Today my blog will be about the conference at MIT I attended today.

As you may already know, MIT's Project New Media Literacies is actually a partner for the program of Global Kids I attend called Media Masters.

Two of the students who attend that after school activity were chosen to attend it.

We left New York at about four and made it to Boston at around ten that night where, after checking into our hotel were taken out for some Afghani food, which I actually found quite good.

We arrived at the conference at around eight the next morning and were assigned cameras which we used to video the conference and do brief interviews with people attending which we conducted in between workshops.

The conference revolved mostly around a project called New Media Literacy.

Continue reading "[mm/teen/conf] MIT Conference" »

Posted by Shonette - GKm2 at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Collective Intelligence is the ability to pool knowledge with others toward a common goal while judgement refers to the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information.

You are probably wondering how Wikipedia comes in to this. We had a group project in which we had to create a Wikipedia page on Prospect Heights Campus. All of the students involved in his had to 'collect' information on all the schools in Prospect Heights Campus and while doing so use their 'Judgment' to ensure that the information was credible, get where I'm going?

Once everyone had information on their assigned topics we then began to put the information on the site and below is the result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_Heights_Campus#Brooklyn_Academy_for_Science_and_the_Environment

Posted by Shonette - GKm2 at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My memory on this is a little fuzzy but when we decided to create a wiki page on Prospect Heights High School Campus for our collective intelligence topic I was excited. Prospect Height Campus did not have a wiki page and we wanted people to know who we are!! So we broke it down in to sub-topics, like the different schools and themes, what the school was like in the past and some of the great things we're doing here. I was co-in-charge of the History section and the High School for Global Citizenship (my high school) and I was shocked by what I learned.

The first thing I learned and was completely shocked by the the fact that Prospect Heights was an all girls school when it first opened and went by the name of The Girls' Commercial High School (which I think now is not a bad idea!!). I also later learned that HSGC's prinicpal, Mr. Rau's grandmother attended The Girls' Commercial High School. Another shocker for me was the fact that Prospect heights high school ranked twelfth most violent among New York City's 125 high schools in 1990 by the Board of Education!! and it became one of the first schools to have scanning and full time police. I learned a lot about the other schools but it felt good to rep my school and make sure people know what great things are coming from HSGC!!!!

The process of putting it together was fun!! everyone had something they were in charge of that way the work load wasn't too heavy on any one person. We also get to check each other and correct things. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that wikipedia needs almost like proof of what your saying is true so we had to do a lot of research on things we already know. But it makes sense, you don't wan people give false or bad information. Over all this was fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_Heights_Campus

Posted by Amana GKm2 at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I played another game. This one deals with life in Haiti and what one must do to survive in such an environment. Because of the country's current economic status and the fact that it is often a victim of many natural disasters it is difficult to make opportunities for yourself.

As the game begins you must choose out of four, what type of strategy you will have during the game. Whether it is to obtain money, to remain healthy, to obtain education or to keep happy, that will be your main focus in the game.

Unfortunately as the game continues you will find that the strategies will begin to overlap until, as per my experience, you will begin to focus more on obtaining money because that is what you will need to keep your family happy, healthy and able to get an education.

The concept of this game is to enable you to experiment with the characters so that you will figure out how to achieve your main objective.

Despite the fact that I cannot remember the exact site should one decide to type in ayiti games on google search you will find it.

Posted by Shonette - GKm2 at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been working on a wikipedia page that myself and other classmates did. We all gathered information and made a page for Prospect Heights Campus , which is a high school located in Brooklyn New York. The school was formerly one whole high school but after certain problems the school was converted in four (4) small schools. The building houses Brooklyn School for Music and Theater , Brooklyn School for Science and the Environment, International High School at Prospect Heights and the High School for Global Citizenship.

This task was quite interesting because we all had to gather information and we had no idea what kind of information the other person had gotten so there might have been several versions of the same information . Also we learned information about our schools that we didn't know and also information about the previous school in the building and what had happened that made the school close down in the first place.

This was fun to do anyway, and by gathering our information we used other sources to get information also, to put on our pages. In the end our information was useful to make the page successful for everyone to visit . If you are interested you can visit wikipedia and type in prospect heights campus to learn more.

Posted by Shonell - Media Masters at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)