NMC Campus Observer

Camp Global Kids Movie

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Oct 20, 2006 10:57pm

At 1:00 PM today, Barry Joseph and Rafi Santo from the Global Kids project visited the NMC Campus Symposium on Impact of Digital Media to share with us the results of the Camp Global Kids project.

In Camp GK, 14 teens from 3 countries spent 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks, learning about global issues and building a challenging maze to end child sex trafficking. This took place entirely on a private island in the Second Life Team grid (SLT).

Barry and Rafi played their new video, Camp Global Kids 2006 “The Year of the Hippo” that provided a good sampling for those who cannot see first hand (the teen grid is for teens only) of what these kids achieved in this program.

Watching the maze in the Camp Global Kids movie

But more that just showing a movie and telling us about a great program, Barry and Rafi arranged for the audience to have an experiential activity, the “human barometer”, where a controversial question was posed (”Increasing growth for Second Life is Good”, and avatars need to pick to stand on either a big prim labeled “Agree” or the one that says, “Disagree”.

Apparently this simply activity was one of the most favorite ones of the teens from Camp GK– an audience member today noted the power of physically “taking a stand.”

The presenters also showed us an example of how the kids are “publishing” their achievements in a comic book format:

The last part was a sharing of their best practices learned in running this program, working with teens, and doing a program in the SL Teen Grid (TSL). Again, they did this in a very active way, with 4 possible topics displayed on their whiteboard, and they polled the audience (via chat) to suggest the one they’d most like to hear about.

A PDF of this is available from the Global Kids site– this was recently summarized by Barry on the SLED listserv:

The following best practices were developed by Global Kids, Inc. through the summer 2006 Camp GK in the teen grid of Second Life. Over four weeks, 15 teens spent three hours a day, five days a week, participating in interactive, experiential workshops about pressing global issues. Over the course of the program the teens picked a topic of concern — child sex trafficking — and built a maze to educate their online community and inspire them to take action. In its first eight weeks, the content-rich maze was visited by 2,500 teens, amongst whom over 450 donated money to an international organization committed to eradicating this global crime against children.

Best practices for working in TSL:

1. What happens in the teen grid stays in the teen grid.
2. Create multiple places of meaning.
3. If you build it, they will come.
4. Go beyond TSL.

Best practices for bringing a youth development model into TSL:

1. Build, build, build!
2. Don’t just build; design and manipulate avatars.
3. Think globally, act locally.
4. Know when teens know best.

Best practices in workshop design and facilitation in TSL:

1. Use real world content when addressing real world issues.
2. Don’t wait until someone has the floor to start typing.
3. Don’t fear multiple communication channels.
4. Incorporate processing into the activity, not just as a final step.

Best practices in program design for TSL:

1. Employ effective, rigorous, targeted recruitment.
2. Replace the dominant TSL culture with the GK Island culture.
3. Carefully design and build the tools required.
4. Ensure the program is designed for the recruited participants

See below for the full audio recording from this session.

Global Kids Project

Story filed under: Audio / Video, People, Places, Things

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