The Story of My “Second Life”

Claudia Linden (claudia@lindenlab.com) gave me permission to blog this post she recently made to the Educators working with Teens mailing list. It was so good I had to share it. Please direct any questions to her. Thanks!

-kj-

Global Kids Island, run by the award-winning NYC-based after school educational organization, Global Kids, was the first public island in the Teen Grid administered by an outside organization. Adapting their global-issue, youth leadership model for a virtual world, in their first year they launched an essay contest on digital media; a virtual summer camp; co-located events from The MacArthur Foundation and the U.S. Holocaust Museum; ran a week-long building contest and associated events for UNICEF about global education and health; brought in speakers like Henry Jenkins of M.I.T. and Mia Farrow; and developed a scavenger hunt for the International Criminal Court. In their second year, Global Kids will launch a new UNICEF initiative involving machinima news; develop a youth-run SL development team out of a high school in Washington, D.C.; bring in more speakers and co-locate events like the National Service-Learning Conference and the annual Global Kids youth conference. They also plan to involve TSL residents in the creation of a new professional development program for educators interested in bringing TSL into their classrooms. Global Kids work is documented, by both teens and adults, on their blog, HolyMeatballs.org.
Contact: Barry Joseph, barry@globalkids.org

Kids Connect, a project of the non-profit Zoomlab, offers a series of collaborative workshops for young people in multiple locations, teaching them to connect and work together via performance, storytelling and collaboration by theatrical and digital means. In their pilot program in summer 2006, participants created a hybrid city and a performance with other students in New York and Amsterdam on Kids Connect Island on the teen grid. Plans for 2007 include hosting a series of virtual forums that coincide with United Nations conferences involving simultaneous conferences and activities in the teen grid (streaming the UN onto the Teen Grid and the Teen Grid forum into the UN), as a way to raise awareness and get teens involved in UN issues, as well as another series of workshops connecting underserved youth in New York and Amsterdam via collaborative building and theater-inspired techniques.
Contact: Josephine Dorado or Dan Winkler, connect@zoomlab.org

Eye4You Alliance, sponsored by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in partnership with the Alliance Library System, Peoria IL, is a pilot program exploring the creation of teen library services in a virtual world. Plans include streamed in audio or video authors, politicians, and other teen-related speakers, building, scripting, and designing classes taught by teens and adults, book discussions, walk-throughs of book or movie scenes, machinima (creating videos of SL), book publishing, art displays, CosPlays (teens dress and act like a favorite anime or manga character), music and drama performance, contests, dancing.
Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/
libraryloft/sets/72157594481641916/
Blog: http://www.eye4youalliance.youthtech.info/
Website: http://plcmc.org/teens/secondlife.asp
Contact: Kelly Czarnecki, KCzarnecki@plcmc.org and Matt Gullet, MGullett@plcmc.org

Ramapo Islands are a volunteer-built project of the Suffern Middle School in Suffern, New York, the first middle school on the Teen Grid. Project director Peggy Sheehy has helped 400+ students to get onto Ramapo Islands for several unique projects In the Second Life learning unit, /Inventions of the 20th Century/, students built a museum of the same name and created exhibits of the inventions they researched. As an extension of the project, as a group they will invent something new in SL and will then have the rights to sell it. Other projects include a Family and Consumer Science class and a unit on Of Mice and Men, complete with a mock trial in a model of courtroom built on the islands.
Blog: http://rampoislands.blogspot.com/
Contact: Peggy Sheehy, psheehy@ramapocentral.org

The PacRimX islands are a project of the Pacific Rim Exchange intercultural exchange program between high school students in the Modesto City Schools in Modesto, California and students at their sister school in Kyoto, Japan, the Kyoto Gakuen High School. Project director Stan Trevena is the Director of Technology for Modesto City Schools and was a beta user of Second Life in 2004. Stan’s three teenage sons (triplets) are active TSL residents. He credits them with drawing his attention to the Second Life Teen Grid for the exchange project. Stan is a tireless blogger: http://pacificrimx.wordpress.com/
Contact: Stan Trevena, Trevena.S@monet.k12.ca.us

The Ohio STEAM island on the Second Life Teen Grid provides a safe environment for middle school students to conduct interactive science experiments, carry out simulated science investigations, and play games that reinforce understanding of science concepts. Supported by the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary team of Ohio University faculty members and graduate students are working with eight science teachers from Appalachian Ohio middle schools to bring excitement about science into classrooms using cutting-edge virtual worlds technology.

http://vital.cs.ohiou.edu/index.php/Interactive_

Science_Lab
http://steam.cs.ohiou.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=
oeef:wwl_ohio
Contacts: Chang Liu, liuc@ohio.edu and Andrew Goodnite, goodnite@ohio.edu

MATRIX Learning is using the Second Life platform with middle school students to explore strategies for acquiring and deepening understanding of pre-Algebra skills. The work is being designed to incorporate math as well as higher order skills like collaboration, forecasting, estimating, critical thinking that are embedded and transparent. The focus of activity is engagement and success in activities that students help create. Matrix Learning is a federal Star Schools grant initiative managed by the Ohio Board of Regents.
Blog: http://matrixlearningsl.wordpress.com/
Contacts: Ed Hill – ehill@regents.state.oh.us, Tim Best – tbest@regents.state.oh.us

Youtopia Island is a project of the National Institute of Education, Singapore. Fifty students and 6 teachers are using Youtopia Island for a multiplayer English language learning game.
http://www.nie.edu.sg
Contact: Azilawati Bte JAMALUDIN, azilawati.j@nie.edu.sg

LearnWay Island is a project of the Columbia Career Center, Columbia Public Schools, Columbia, MO. They are creating an extension of their career center on the Teen Grid of Second Life and will offer a range of courses for high school and college credit.
Contact: Bryan Carter, bc7@mac.com

Oz Island is a collaboration of the Topeka Shawnee County Public Library, Kansas Department of Education, University of Kansas Medical Center, Emporia State University, and Topeka Public School District. The project supports community engagement with youth in which high school book club members create and share SL resources, based on the books they read in the club.
Contact: David Antonacci, dantonacci@kumc.edu

Schome Park is hosted by The Schome Group at the Open University (UK) working with colleagues from Liverpool University, Warwick University and the National Physical Laboratory, and around 200 students from the National Association for Gifted and Talented Youth to explore the educational potential of (Teen) Second Life. See the Schome Community Website at http://schome.open.ac.uk/wikiworks/index.php/Schome_
%26_Second_Life/.
Contact: Peter Twining, P.Twining@open.ac.uk

BritishCouncil Isle will provide a space for non-native speakers of English to learn, improve and practice English through interacting with other teens and by engaging a range of multimedia learning objects.
Contact: Hector Low, hector.low@britishcouncil.org

Accelerate Nation is an exploration of the Project Accelerate Consortium, a partnership between BOCES, City School Districts and non-public districts throughout New York State. Accelerate Nation is an extention of AccelerateU.org. This TeenGrid project offers a range of courses for high school and college credit and helps classroom teachers enhance existing instruction by reaching into the possibilities of the virtual world. Accelerate Nation provides science and math lab experiential learning, social, cultural, and economic studies as well as new media arts and communication. See the website: AccelerateU.org
Contact: Jenine Welch, jwech@edutech.org mailto:jwech@edutech.org