On Friday, digital education dominated the kidsphere, spanning from my own NextNow collaboratory peer, Claudia L’Amoreaux of Second Life, speaking at the Smithsonian on storytelling and innovation in the metaverse (interview here), to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop’s first annual symposium on the impact of digital media in educating children. (webcast here)
Here’s the agenda that Global Kids’ Digital Initative live-streamed Friday, called, “Logging into the Playground”…all about how digital media is shaping kids’ learning. And here’s the YouTube video showing some of the kids interacting firsthand, along with the Consumer Reports WebWatch study of key points and full report here.
Now…If this all sounds like gobbledygook to you, let’s back up and start with the basics…“What is a virtual world?” then segue to my prior post about the greening of kids’ virtual worlds for Earth Day, which we have NOT forgotten about on the follow-up front!
In fact, due to deferrals from gonzo deadlines for our fund-raiser screening of Two Angry Moms, I’m going to ‘up the ante’ and bring forth personal interviews with the founders/creative minds behind both Zookazoo and Dizzywood, on their respective launches and plans in the kids’ virtual world arena to enlighten and inform.
Between the upcoming U.K. Virtual World Event and last month’s NYC ’08 event (mp3 keynotes and speaker presentations here; (um, do we really need to fly and ad to the carbon footprint for biz travel anymore?) it’s obvious to see why kids’ virtual worlds rule in terms of industry adoption in the digital sphere. (solid post here about the SL/TSL grid conundrum)
There’s the positive: e-learning progress on how students are taught foreign languages with avatars in Second Life, and a great MIT press academic treatise by Global Kids’ Barry Joseph called “Why Johnny Can’t Fly” (Treating games as a form of youth media within a youth development framework) and the inevitable negative: SL/FTC loggerheads on adult sims that should be nowhere near school environs, and all the advertising to children in virtual worlds…
Then there are all the promising, colorful shades of hope and massive growth in-between, including the media grid of immersive education, and the new green games, with some being virtual worlds (e.g. HulalaGirls) and some not: Gorilla in the Greenhouse, Silverbackers.org mobile game, and Green My Brain which still DO inspire kids in positive ways.
To recap, here’s Consumer Reports’ WebWatch whopper of a paper (58 pdf) on how young children interact with online environments and a variety of YouTube channel snippets from CWW showing younger kids interacting with ads, pop-ups, free-trial game meltdowns, 6-year old kindergarten Googling and more…
What ARE kids learning in virtual worlds?
This is key for those of us trying to move forward a more meaningful agenda…
Which reminds me, if anyone has already spent considerable time in the ‘gaming goes green’ HulalaGirls site, please ping me with credentials for a guest editorial, as our tween team has been a bit overloaded, and we’d love to meld your own experiences and hear what else is worth checking out!
For now, though, I’m going to turn over the blog to Shaping Youth Correspondent and doctoral research candidate Sara M. Grimes of Gamine Expedition with her debriefing on Friday’s Sesame Street Symposium.
Take it away Sara!
The Sesame Symposium by Sara M. Grimes for Shaping Youth
Common Sense Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (a.k.a. Sesame Workshop) held the First Annual Joan Ganz Cooney Center Symposium Focusing On The Impact Of Digital Media In Educating Children, an invitation-only symposium that was streamed live both online and within Second Life.
Following on the heel’s of the “D is for Digital” study the Center released earlier this year, which reported on the sorry state of “educational” tech toys for kids, today’s symposium was geared towards harnessing the power (and pleasures) of digital technologies to create new learning opportunities, bridge digital divides, and encourage the private sector to commit to higher goals and standards when it comes to educational products.
To give you an idea of the scope and tone of the event, here’s an excerpt from the promotional description provided on the Global Kids website:
Michael Levine, the Center’s Executive Director, said:
“Today’s children are growing up in an era of rapid change. Unprecedented learning tools are at their disposal: real breakthroughs and remarkable gains in education are possible. We can and we must harness these promising communication technologies for children now, especially those who are lagging behind. The early endorsement of partners like McGraw-Hill, EA, CPB and PBS reinforce the importance of our mission. The symposium is a timely opportunity to convene the critical sectors to advance innovation and mobilize change.”
The agenda for the day-long event, comprised of panel discussions, children-led demonstrations of new technologies and a hands-on forum promoting two dozen of the best digital media initiatives in the nation, features a keynote address by EA’s Chief Creative Officer, Bing Gordon, and one of the first demonstrations of BOOM BLOX, a new game for Nintendo Wii developed by EA in association with director Steven Spielberg. All panels were streamed on the web by the Center’s partner, Global Kids.
While coverage of the event itself has yet to appear (I didn’t get a chance to tune in myself, unfortunately), some initial coverage of the symposium’s background documents (which you can access via ypulse) was provided by Gary Rusak in today’s KidScreen Daily.
Rusak focuses in on a new study conducted by Common Sense Media, and released to coincide with the symposium, which examines parents’ thoughts about kids and digital media.
The major conclusion of the study appears to be the finding that parents actually feel quite ambivalent about their kids’ “digital media savvy” — feeling that digital media skills are important (as beneficial as traditional skills such as reading and math), but also critical about the social aspects of (and social skills development associated with) new media technologies. As Rusak explains:
A full 67% of parents said they did not think the internet helped teach their kids to communicate more effectively; 87% of parents said they did not believe the internet helped their kids learn how to work with others; and 75% do not believe the web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.
Jim Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, says the findings indicate that parents are trying to catch up with the technological advances that their children more easily adapt to:
“When it comes to digital media in kids’ lives, it’s a confusing time to be a parent,” he explains. “Clearly, parents seem to understand that the wold has fundamentally changed and that kids need digital media to be successful…But, the results suggest that parents still have reservations about how their kids engage with each other using digital media.”
Pretty obvious, I know, but I’m nonetheless quite pleased to see a study and some stats to support the common sense perception that parents are dealing with a pretty paradoxical assortment of feelings, information and expectations when it comes to kids and ICTs. –Sara M. Grimes
Shaping Youth Correspondent Sara M. Grimes is is a PhD Candidate with the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and founder of the ACT Games Lab.
Her research explores the legal and ethical dimensions of children’s evolving relationship with new media technologies, the rationalization of children’s play within commercialized technological systems, and the political economy of digital games. She blogs regularly at Gamine Expedition (always in our sidebar) and was recently cited in the U.K. Financial Times regarding commercialization within the Barbie world of gaming.
See her related post today, “Barbie BCause Backlash” and her ongoing insights at Gamine Expedition. –Amy J.
p.s. Here’s a teeny photo from a recent NextNow Collaboratory dinner at JingJings in Palo Alto; that’s internet pioneer Doug Engelbart (foreground) yours truly (3rd from left) and Claudia L’Amoreaux at the other end of table!)
Resources From Steve Denning’s Interview with Claudia L’Amoreaux:
Some definitions of “Second Life” and “the Metaverse”
Early history of the Metaverse
Relation of the Metaverse to learning and innovation
Using the Metaverse for training
How does the Metaverse affect day-to-day work?
The relation of the Metaverse to innovation
Avatars and real people: what is identity?
A Second Life for the Smithsonian participants?
Upcoming challenges for the Metaverse
Some definitions of “Second Life” and “the Metaverse”
Steve: “Let’s start with some basics. What is the “Metaverse”? And what is “Second Life”?
Claudia: Many people today use “The Metaverse” to refer to the 3D internet. “Second Life” is one of several three-dimensional, immersive, networked worlds in the Metaverse. Because of its richness and complexity, and because it is entirely created by its inhabitants, Second Life happens to be my favorite 3D world.
Philip Rosedale founded Linden Lab in 1999 in a small lab on Linden Lane in San Francisco. Second Life officially launched in 2003 and has seen tremendous growth in the last few years. For a little background, author Neal Stephenson first described the “Metaverse” in his 1992 science fiction novel, Snow Crash. He told a prescient story about a place where humans, as avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional space that uses the metaphor of the real world. Metaverse is a compound of the words “meta” and “universe.”
Early history of the Metaverse
Steve: “You were involved in virtual worlds long before Linden Lab and Second Life. Could you tell us about that?”
Claudia: “I began exploring virtual worlds back in the 1980s when I bought a Macintosh computer and the game Manhole designed by the creators of Myst. Manhole was a graphical world for exploration and it whetted my appetite for using virtual worlds for learning. I co-founded an experimental media lab in the late 80s — we were building 3D worlds and playing with early motion capture software.
One of the very early networked immersive worlds was WorldsChat, launched in 1994. It came out of some work that Steven Spielberg was doing called StarBright which involved creating a virtual world for children who were seriously ill. It enabled them to enter into a really beautiful world together while they were isolated in the hospital.
Worlds Chat was so new and fresh. It enabled people to take on a character and to be “embodied” in this imaginal realm–the Metaverse–to be able to create a character for yourself and to “inhabit” these different spaces. WorldsChat used a space station visual metaphor.
One of the first times I used it, I had a conversation with a European teenager. It struck me that I never would have connected with this person in the physical world. I saw how the technology could help us cut across boundaries and open up new kinds of relationships. This was very important in my work with young people…”
For more of this interview, visit Smithsonian Associates storytelling weekend
I was thinking on this issue last evening and I decided to search the WWW for more information. Your blog came up in my research and I’m impress what you have written on this subject field. As I’m currently broadening my search and thus cannot chip in further, however, I’ve bookmarked it and will be returning to further comment. Like I said, love this comment and will be back shortly.