METANOMICS: KIDS BUILDING DIGITAL BRIDGES

JANUARY 26, 2009

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Hello, everyone. I’m your host, Robert Bloomfield, and on behalf

of Remedy Communications, Dusan Writer and myself, welcome to Metanomics. Usually

when we think of young people in Virtual Worlds, we think of entertainment. World of

Warcraft has been a standard setter in generating revenue and loyalty from the teen crowd,

while Club Penguin does the same for kids under ten. But, what about more serious uses of

Virtual Worlds? Education, social action, learning how to make a difference in the world and

perhaps how to make a living.

Today we turn our focus to some of these activities involving young people right here in

Second Life and its companion grid, Teen Second Life. Our guests are Barry Joseph, of

Global Kids, and David Klevan, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Barry heads up

Global Kids’ efforts to work with disadvantaged youth through technology, while David has

seen the youth-initiated work with the Holocaust Museum in a variety of capacities.

Metanomics is filmed by SLCN TV in the virtual Sage Hall, right here in Second Life. Thanks

to my real life employer, Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Special thanks also to Doug Thompson, founder and CEO of Remedy Communications,

author of Dusan Writer’s Metaverse. Remedy has taken over the management and

operations of Metanomics, leaving me with [AUDIO GLITCH] to point out [AUDIO GLITCH] I

and my guests are more animated then the usual Second Life avatar, that’s thanks to

JenzZa Misfit, who is animating me in real time, using her new product Avateer Pro. As I

mentioned last week, Remedy is currently looking for sponsors so if you’re interested,

please contact Doug directly at dusan.writer@gmail.com.

I’d like to offer a very special welcome to everyone at our event partner locations spread

across Second Life. We have people at Muse Isle, Confederation of Democratic Sims, Meta

Partners Conference Area, Rockliffe University, New Media Consortium and Orange Island.

Metanomics is kicking off Orange Island’s celebration of nonprofits this week, with special

events every day. You can see their website for more information.

This is probably also a good time to mention that there are also a lot of educational activities

since I think we have a fair number of educational viewers today. And so in case you missed

the blog posts on blog.secondlife.com or the announcements on the Second Life Educators

mailing list, the first annual Real Life Education Support Fair starts tomorrow. There will be

regions open as early--I’m sorry, actually it was yesterday, Sunday morning. You can see

the Wiki page, but there’s a lot of information and a lot of stuff going on there. So if you’re

interested in the topics today, my guess is you’re interested in the education fair.

I’d like to point out that we’re using InterSection Unlimited’s ChatBridge system to transmit

local chat to our website and website chat to our event partners. Speak up, and let everyone

know your thoughts. Just so you know how important this can be, we had Daniel Voyager

pipe up last week when we were interviewing Philip Linden, Philip Rosedale, founder of

Linden Lab, and he asked, through ChatBridge, the very last question that Philip Rosedale

answered. He asked, “Linden Lab doesn’t seem to be doing anything these days for the

teen grid, or they’ve stopped sign-ups outside the U.S. They’re not doing resident events,

and now they’re thinking to merge the grids at some point. What do you think of that?” And,

Philip surprised a number of people by saying that Linden Lab plans to shut down Teen

Second Life and integrate kids under 18 into the main grid, which is now restricted to adults.

We had hoped to have Daniel on the show today, to talk about that, but unfortunately that

didn’t work out for technical reasons. It’s not easy to replace, Daniel, for the simple reason

that, if you’re on the teen grid, you aren’t allowed to be in the main grid. Either you’re under

18, or you’re over 18. So we do the next best thing. We have Peggy Sheehy, library media

specialist, an instructional technology facilitator at Suffern Middle School, part of the

Ramapo Central School District in New York State. For our On The Spot segment, Peggy

Sheehy. Peggy, welcome to Metanomics.

PEGGY SHEEHY: Hey, there. Happy to be here.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah, well, it’s great to have you on again. Last time we

talked--this was over the summer--you had brought 800 Suffern middle school students into

Teen Second Life and 18 fifth graders. What have you been up to since then?

PEGGY SHEEHY: Well, actually we’re up to about 1,400 student accounts, which is not to

in any way presume that there’s ever 1,400 kids logged in simultaneously. But, as the

classes graduated and went to high school and the high school classes are more blended

and more age levels needed to be brought in, tenth and eleventh grade as well, so we

actually do have that many accounts. And we have 45 formally trained teachers that actually

took a district-supported in-service in teaching in Second Life. We have a lot of teachers

who are also just dabbling.

The exciting thing that’s happened for us this year is, there’s some very creative thinking

with my superintendent and with some ideas flowing out of ISTE and the NEC conference

this year. We are looking at opening up one of our islands. How that’s going to be

determined and the specifics of that are still kind of on the drawing board, but we’re kind of

envisioning a virtual drawbridge of sorts because the piece that we’ve been missing since

day one on Ramapo is the global collaborative piece. We’ve been an estate unto ourselves.

And, although the kids are having wonderful experiences and developing wonderful skills

and we’ve enjoyed the benefits of the virtual identity within the realm of the schoolwork and

addressing different content areas, the piece that we’ve been missing, which I always feel is

a foundational piece of Twenty-First Century skills in learning, is that global collaborative

piece. So this is our first step towards opening up and having collaborative projects and

efforts with our kids and kids from other schools from around the world.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: So let me just clarify this a little bit, when you talk about opening

up. As I understand it, in the teen grid, for the most part, people have secure regions and

you can go onto that region if you’re part of that organization, otherwise you can’t. Your

hope is to have an island, like there are so many of throughout Second Life that are simply

open and anyone who is allowed in Teen Second Life could go to that island. Is that what

you’re talking about?

PEGGY SHEEHY: Well, that’s my next round of the vision actually. Initially the first step for

us, because being the pioneers, we have to be very cautious that things do work well and

we don’t have a situation arise where the end result of that is other schools say, “See, it’s

not going to work. We can’t do it.” So our steps are baby steps. The first invitation will be to

other schools, and they will be schools that share our same security protocols. So we’ll be

inviting classes over. Ultimately, yes, we’d like to be a wide open estate and invite all kids,

whether they’re in the teen grid affiliated with an educational institution or not, to come in

and participate and collaborate and exchange information and ideas. But the first step is

going to be opening up to other schools.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Let me take this, I guess, to maybe the third step. And just so the

audience knows, we started a little late today, and part of that was because we were trying

to sort out how it might be possible to actually get under-18s and over-18s somehow to

interact in some way, which is very difficult given the terms of service. And, as I mentioned

at the top of the show, we’ve had a number of discussions on Metanomics just over the last

week during the show, in our group chat, on blogs throughout, about integrating the two

grids. How much of a challenge is it to have that 18-year-old age cut off and either you’re in

Teen Second Life or the main grid?

PEGGY SHEEHY: I personally think it’s a really big challenge because of the fact that next

year will be the first year that we will actually have a senior class in, and some of those kids

are going to be 18. And just facing the whole situation of, “Well, we’re on the main grid, and

we’re on the teen grid. And how do we participate simultaneously? And how we

collaborate?” I mean there have been very creative solutions from different places, even

some universities face that issue. But really, ultimately, what we need is either a new

educational grid where the age factor is not one of the contingencies where adults, parents,

students can interact, different grade levels, different interests, different content areas.

That’s one solution.

Another solution is to somehow make it viable that, if you are signed up as a student, you

have a different level of access and maybe a little bit more flexibility. Maybe those particular

estates that are labeled as educational institutions can allow that particular status in.

Greater minds than I are tackling that problem, and I do feel a solution coming down the

road, but right now, yes, it is problematic. And Daniel could have spoken very well to it, I’m

sure. I’m very sad that Daniel is not here today. He’s a remarkable young man. I’ve had

some fascinating conversations with him. His work is phenomenal. I hold his photographs in

Second Life photography up as the exemplar.

I have with me in the room some teens, some of my eighth graders, who are on the teen

grid as well as on Ramapo Island, who have befriended Daniel before he had left, and they

miss him terribly. They are willing to, via me, I will kind of work as voice squad today. But if

you have questions you wanted to address with them, they’re ready, willing and able, sitting

here in my office with me.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. I guess one question I would ask is--I mean there’s one

issue of shutting down the teen grid, which I’m sure would be unpopular among the 1,400

students you have brought in. But another one which I’m curious about is really a separate

issue of letting kids in to the main grid, and I’m wondering how they feel about that. Is that

something that they would look forward to, that they would shy away from?

PEGGY SHEEHY: That’s what I’m going to ask them right now. How would you feel about

being let into the main grid? Is that something that’s important to you? And, if so, why is it

important?

STUDENT 1: Could I speak? That would be very interesting, because the main grid is a lot

more complex than the teen grid, because on the teen grid you have teens. I mean I know

there are some adults on the teen grid, but you have teens running around everywhere, and

it’s not completely organized. On the main grid, you actually have professional businesses

and actual conferences going on. That’ll be actually pretty exciting.

PEGGY SHEEHY: All right. Are you able to hear my students?

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yes, I’m afraid I am, and I’m not sure if that’s okay. But, as I

understand it, they were just talking to you, and I happen to overhear that.

PEGGY SHEEHY: They were just talking to me, and I am controlling my avatar so--

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Well, you might tell them that the response we get from in-world

is, the main grid is organized, with multiple question marks. What are their favorite activities

outside the Ramapo Islands in Teen Second Life?

PEGGY SHEEHY: [NO RESPONSE]

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Did I lose you, Maggie?

PEGGY SHEEHY: No. I’m just asking them the question right now.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. Wonderful.

STUDENT 2: Shopping is cool.

PEGGY SHEEHY: Normally what they’re saying is, they use it for socialization, but they’re

also entrepreneurs. They’ve been forming businesses and sharing information and

knowledge with each other. Two of them are very involved in scripting. And actually one of

them had to leave. He had an orthodontist appointment. He’s actually very involved in

working on cross-Sim, not cross-grid, but cross-Sim communication. He’s working on it with

some people, some teens on the teen grid, and he’s hoping to bring that knowledge back to

Ramapo because we face the difficulty that the maps are disabled on private estates, so

we’re unable to open up our map of the six islands and simply click on an area to teleport

over to it. That is disabled.

So they’re looking there, actually working with other teens on the teen grid, to address that

problem, and then they will bring that information back, using their Ramapo avatar to try to

effect a solution to that. So they really are entrepreneurial. They are socializing. They do a

lot of playful things too as well.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Well, fascinating. We’re basically out of time, but I do have

a couple things I’d like to mention. One is that I have already gone through the background

checks and everything that would be necessary to get onto the teen grid because, over the

summer, we were hoping we could do a show within Teen Second Life. So, Maggie, maybe

we can work together to pull that off. So fair warning to Lynn Cullins, my incredibly

hardworking producer that, boy, that’ll be more work. But I’d love to see if that could happen.

PEGGY SHEEHY: I would love to make that happen as well. That would be fabulous.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I’m sorry to talk over you, but I’m aware of the time, and I just

wanted to say one more thing, which is that we actually stream this show. You can watch

this show live on the web at metanomics.net/watchnow. You could actually go back to your

classroom presumably and fire up the computer and let people see the rest of the show.

They can even chat in ChatBridge. They’re doing everything on the web, and I haven’t

gotten a legal opinion on this, but I’m not sure that that poses a problem regarding terms of

service because it’s web content. Anyway, I’ll leave you with that question.

PEGGY SHEEHY: Thank you. And we always tend to err on the side of caution because

we are the pioneers, and we definitely want to set the right example.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah. I do appreciate that. Thank you so much for working with

us through these challenges to get a little interaction with the kids. And I have to say another

word slipped out there on the second question, which is “shopping.” Apparently kids like

shopping on the teen grid as much as the adults seem to like it here on the main grid. So,

Maggie Marat, Peggy Sheehy, of Ramapo School District, thank you very much for coming

again onto Metanomics, and I hope you can host me in Teen Second Life sometime in the

future.

PEGGY SHEEHY: Thanks a lot. I look forward to it. We’ll continue to listen. Thanks,

everyone.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Let’s turn now to today’s main guests Barry Joseph and

David Klevan. Barry is director of the online leadership program of Global Kids, an

organization committed to educating and inspiring urban youth to become successful

students as well as global and community leaders. Since it was launched in 2000, the online

leadership program has built a number of strong collaborative relationships with Microsoft,

with PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur

Foundation. David is education manager for technology and distance learning initiatives, the

division of outreach technology for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which,

according to its website, is a living memorial to the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum stimulates leaders and citizens to confront hatred, prevent genocide,

promote human dignity and strengthen democracy. So, Barry, David, welcome to

Metanomics.

BARRY: Thank you, Robert. It’s good to be here.

DAVID: Thanks, Robert.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Now you two collaborated in 2007, by bringing together youth

who were interning at the Museum in Washington, D.C., and youth associated with Global

Kids in New York City, to let them create and curate their own exhibits and create animated

movies about Kristallnacht, the so-called Night of Shattered Glass, one of the most

historically important events in Nazi Germany.

We have a video. I’d like to start this off with a video that we have, that you guys made from

the Teen Second Life Exhibit. And so, Texas and Wiz, if you can cue that up, let’s take a

look and listen to this.

[VIDEO BEGINS]

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: What happens when teens curate museum content?

LYNN WILLIAMS, U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM: Since the Museum opened

its doors, young people from the local community have shaped the way we teach and learn.

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: Teens from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and

teens from New York City Global Kids decided to find out just how.

DAVID KLEVAN, U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM: Being a museum ambassador

means sharing your knowledge and experience with others, both locally and globally.

MIRATA, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: Staff of Global Kids New York, teen ambassadors

and Museum staff met through Second Life, Skype and phone.

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: We made drawings that illustrated different possible

exhibition topics.

MIRATA, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: Within a few weeks, we had discussed issues of

curation, both in the Real World and in Second Life.

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: After a lot of discussion, we focused on the idea of a

bystander, and we honed in on the Night of Broken Glass for the basis of our build.

CHRISTIAN, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: We gathered information from the Museum

archives and put it in a design document.

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: On the other end, we coupled with teens who made

our ideas into a reality. That is, a virtual reality.

TRAVIS: My name is Travis, a Real life Orca. I’m 15, and I’m a CEO of Digital Refinery, an

all-teen in-world development company. Digital Refinery and the ambassadors in

Washington, D.C. worked together over the course of the program. After several sessions,

their Second Life exhibition was complete. It is called Witness To History. We wanted

visitors to investigate the actions of ordinary people during the Holocaust, so they take on

the role of an investigative reporter. The assignment: find out what people did, what they

didn’t do during the Night of Broken Glass. You learn from the environment. Shattered

storefront windows, boarded-up stores, general distraction. But you also see people, like

clicking on the cutouts of human figures, you learn about the choices facing ordinary people:

Jews and non-Jews, kids, adults, students and store owners, as well as firemen and police

officers.

The synagogue is a sacred place for Jewish people. We wanted to show both before and

after Kristallnacht, to emphasize the destruction and loss incurred by the Jews in Germany.

Before leaving, we wanted visitors to reflect, discuss and write about what they saw. The

Museum’s Hall of Remembrance inspired us to make the space spare and introspective.

Visitors can share their thoughts by posting note cards to the bulletin board. Learn more

about the holocaust and genocide prevention and pick up a free T-shirt.

CHRISTIAN, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: So in the process, we learned a lot.

ANDRE, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: The project focused on things that we thought were

important, and then that, more than anything else, inspired us.

MIRATA, MUSEUM AMBASSADOR: I think the essence of what we wanted to convey

came through.

[VIDEO CONCLUDES]

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: David Klevan, what was the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s

motivation for this collaboration?

DAVID KLEVAN: Well, it’s a great question. I’ll tell you. As you said at the beginning, our

mission is to educate and disseminate information about the Holocaust to memorialize the

victims and encourage folks who either visit the Museum or encounter our content and

programs to reflect on it. And the first time I was introduced to Second Life, it immediately

struck me as a fantastic platform both for experimentations in education. I was fascinated by

an online tool where you could learn kinesthetically as well as through other means. But

also a lot of people in the museum world were starting to talk about what the potential might

be for experiments in curation.

I’d met Barry and his colleague Ravi Santos at the Games For Change Festival in New York

City, and they’d impressed me a great deal. At times you can just tell when you meet

someone that their approach to education and working with young people is the same as

yours, and I learned a great deal from Barry. At the Museum, we have a long-running

partnership with the local D.C. community, mainly started out through the D.C. public

schools.

And, for a long time, we had been listening to young people who were helping us learn more

about how we could better serve the community, and this just seemed like a natural fit. So

that was really the motivation to get started on this, and I knew that Barry and the folks at

Global Kids would bring the expertise that we didn’t have, about how to work in Second Life,

how people learn in Second Life. And then, on our end, we could bring some expertise

related to the museum world and curation. And then we really just wanted to see, if we gave

young people the tools they needed, what could they create for them, for their peers and

possibly for others to learn about this history.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: And, David, you took this further into the main grid, the adult grid,

with your Kristallnacht exhibit, which was launched back in early December. So it’s been a

couple months. Do you view that as a success?

DAVID KLEVAN: Actually, as a matter of fact, it’s been a success, I think, beyond my

expectations. We’re continuing to learn a lot and just the fact that teenagers were able to

come up with the design document that was transferable. Even though what was built on the

main grid was built by Involved Incorporated, it was using the same concept and design that

the kids had come up with over a year before. And since we launched it, we launched it in

mid December, as I’m sure you know from the vagaries of Second Life, it’s difficult for us to

get a good solid number on how many folks have gone through it, but we have a section of

our Sim where visitors can leave comments as they go through. And, from those, I’ve

learned a great deal about our visitors.

We had one visitor whose grandmother was a nurse in the U.S. Army, and she had found

some of her grandmother’s photos, which included about ten photos from Buchenwald after

liberation. We’ve had visitors who went through and said, “Is there a way to donate to the

Museum? I want to support the folks who created this.” And, truthfully, we hadn’t set up a

means for donation until I received that comment. Now there is a means for that.

A number of visitors asked, “Is there a group that we can join? Does the Museum have a

group? We want to learn about future projects you might have here.” And, again, I planned

to create a group. I hadn’t at that point, and that just lit a fire under me so now we have a

group. The name of the group is U.S. Holocaust Museum, so I encourage folks to join.

There are a number of other things. I mean it’s amazing the folks who have gone through,

who have family members who are survivors, who have expressed the fact that they don’t

know that they’ll ever be able to visit the Museum in Washington, D.C., and how excited

they are to be able to see this in Second Life. And the few times that there have been neo

Nazis or others who have been disruptive in the space, visitors have either alerted me or

have been there and been able to respond to it themselves. It’s an amazing community.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I find this discussion really timely because I was in New York City

doing a little work, and then I had the opportunity to go to a couple museums, the

Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it got me to thinking about just how

passive most museum experiences are. You walk, you watch and you listen. Because we

had the little audio guides. Your Second Life efforts and your collaboration with Global Kids

really turned that around because you were asking the kids to quite literally create and

curate their own exhibits. I’m wondering, David, do you see this as an example of a more

general trend that we can expect to see in museums?

DAVID KLEVAN: I think that you’ll see it as a trend in some museums, and I think you’ll see

it as a slow change, in all honesty. When you come from an institution where a great deal of

thought is given to vetting content and to making sure that everything is historically accurate

and where you have people, frankly, who are paid for their expertise to curate things and to

proofread things, it’s very challenging to hand over that power to so-called nonprofessionals.

I see enormous potential in Second Life because here’s a space where you can relatively

inexpensively mock up exhibitions. You can experiment with ideas that you may or may not

want to use in real life. And my hope is that we’ll see a shift where more and more museums

will be able to work with their curatorial staff, their exhibition staff, their education staff, to

experiment with exhibits years perhaps before they do them in the Real World. Trying them

out in Second Life. Getting ideas. Seeing how people respond. Allowing visitors perhaps

even to annotate it or help them build it. And then, based on that, doing what you want to in

real life and still keeping something unique in Second Life.

You’ve seen that shift, for instance, with the Tech Museum of Innovation. I know that the

Tech Museum did a very interesting experiment where they got groups of lay people

together to design things in Second Life, and then some of them I know they planned to

recreate in the Real World. I don’t remember whether they’ve done that yet or not.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Great. This is such a natural transition, I think, to an email

interaction I had with Barry over the weekend. Barry, you told me that the core game

mechanics of Second Life meshed very well with Twenty-First Century educational theory.

And, if you don’t mind my combination of quoting and paraphrasing here.

BARRY JOSEPH: Please.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: “The core mechanic of a game is essentially the thing you do. In

Pacman, you eat dots, and you avoid monsters. In Space Invaders, you shoot ships. In

Second Life, to the extent it’s a game, you build your self and the world around you, and the

narrative is a blank slate created by those who came before you.” That last part is a quote

because I really liked the way you described that. So I guess for those of us not steeped in

Twenty-First Century educational theory, why do you see that as such a good fit?

BARRY JOSEPH: Well, let me just add that the context for the conversation was talking

about what does one learn by being in a place like Second Life or Teen Second Life and

what one learns from games in general. Which isn’t to say Teen Second Life is always a

game, but at times it has game-like aspects. What one learns is from the core mechanic.

One learns from what one does irregardless of what those things often might be. So if the

core mechanic of Teen Second Life is about creating and building and making that world

around you, that in and of itself becomes a valuable learning.

And, to get more specific, to talk about Twenty-First Century learning skills, let me use one

program as a focus. Let’s talk about Playing For Keeps. That’s our after-school gaming

program, which is funded by Microsoft. Actually today we are launching--I’m hoping the URL

can be posted--the game the youth made in the teen grid. It’s called Consent. The youth

made a game that’s an immersive experience that challenges its players to make difficult

decisions while learning about six decades of medical racism, targeting African American

male prisoners. And, in this after-school program that met in the school, but in the

after-school hours, they spent the year learning about Second Life, learning about game

design and then learning how they could take a serious issue in the world and figure out

how to incorporate it into a game and specifically make that game, that simulation, be in

Second Life.

So when we talk about Twenty-First Century learning skills, what are they learning in that

context? Well, when you’re making a simulation, you have to identify the constituent parts of

a system and how they relate to one another, developing systems thinking. And that, along

with a number of other critical thinking skills, are part of the tool sets that young people need

today if they’re going to be successful in the classrooms, in the workplace or in the public

sphere.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Just to be clear, yours is primarily an after-school program. Is that

right? I mean this is in addition to traditional education?

BARRY JOSEPH: That’s right. Primarily Global Kids work is in classrooms after school,

around New York City. We also do work with youth that we never meet in person, such as

Daniel Voyager in Second Life. And, finally, we get to do distance learning with

organizations like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who we worked with over the

course of that summer two years ago, but we never actually were there in person. Using

Second Life and using Skype, we were able to do it all remotely.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: The reason I ask about the fact that this is after school, I deal

somewhat with the educational community, and I hear a fair bit about the regulatory trends

and No Child Left Behind, which I would say is really going in the opposite direction, in many

ways, of what you’re describing, rather than a rather free-flowing, “create your own world,”

interact and empowering youth to create content and experience free form, unstructured

challenges. It’s much more, “Look. Here are our learning objectives, and we’re going to

grind you until you do well enough on the test.” Do you see this as a complement to

traditional education, or would you actually rather see more people doing within the school

things along the lines of what Peggy Sheehy, Maggie Marat, who was just on, are doing,

which sounds more like what you’re talking about?

BARRY JOSEPH: Well, Maggie’s work is certainly remarkable. It’s an incredible model of

what’s possible to do within the system. And we look at Global Kids work often as what’s

possible for doing what they call the informal learning space. But whether you’re talking to

Maggie or myself, our goals are the same. We want to develop young people’s ability to

think critically about the world and see themselves as powerful agents of social change,

being able to be a positive force in society. So we want to reach youth in an effective way

and reach the numbers.

Schools are where most young people are so we want to do things in schools. We just

actually released the evaluation of our Science In Second Life high school class, which was

a freshman-level high school class that we did last year, where youth were in Second Life

every day, with a teacher in person and a teacher from Scotland, teaching about global

science issues. That’s a little bit unusual for us because usually we work in the, as you say,

the after-school space because that gives us the freedom to really experiment and work with

new technologies in new ways that the standard-based system isn’t always so ready to

adapt.

But even so, you find people, like Maggie, who are doing really innovative work within that

incredibly confined restrictive system. So last fall, for example, we released our Second Life

curriculum, over 450 pages of free Open Source lesson plans that anybody can use, and we

were finding that people were using it in all sorts of environments: after-school settings,

in-school settings. And really what we want to do, as people who can support other

organizations in their capacity building around using Virtual Worlds is help them figure out

what makes sense for them. Should it be after school or in school? Should it be Second

Life? Should it be Whyville? What kind of tools should they be using to empower the young

people, with Twenty-First Century learning skills, using IT technology?

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I’m seeing a bunch of interesting questions from the backchat,

and so I’d like to run through these. A couple of the questions deal with race, and I guess it’s

been my personal experience that the main grid in Second Life, although it’s global, it

doesn’t seem to have a large proportion of African Americans from the U.S. or Blacks from

Europe. We have a comment. I think it was Joia Sands found it interesting that all the young

people in the video we showed were Black. And Prospero Linden asks what fraction of the

Global Kids students are Blacks. Barry, can you talk a little bit about the racial composition

of the kids you deal with?

BARRY JOSEPH: Sure. I think what we’re addressing here are larger issues around the

digital divide and how they relate to technology. When I first started the online leadership

program here at Global Kids almost nine years ago, a lot of people didn’t understand why

we’d want to work with young people to think about web design. Nowadays, to think about a

young person being successful and not knowing how to search on Google, or go research

on Wikipedia, doesn’t make sense to anybody. It’s clear that everyone needs to have those

skills. Virtual Worlds just came a few years ago, the latest new technology that are

becoming part of mass culture. And, a few years ago, you didn’t have the numbers, but now

we know that the majority of young people in the next year or two are going to all be in

Virtual Worlds. And the millions that are in a variety of Worlds early attest to that.

So what we want to do, as an organization like Global Kids, is, on one hand, reach out to

the youth who are currently in these spaces, but at the same time work with the youth we

work with face to face, who are not in these spaces, to bring them in. So many of the young

people who you see in the video are the young people that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial

Museum works with in D.C. and we’re able to then work with them to give them skills and

support them in ways that they might not have the opportunity to do. At the same time, we

want to work with youth who are already in these spaces, to build up their awareness

around these issues, around racism, sexism, homophobia, etcetera.

DAVID KLEVAN: Just to add to that, it’s important to note that just because they’re

teenagers doesn’t mean that they have any experience at all with Second Life. Something

that was a real eye-opener for me was that, really, the kids who worked on this project with

us, almost none of them had even been in Second Life before this project.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: That’s doesn’t surprise me too much. Go ahead.

BARRY JOSEPH: I’m sorry to interrupt you, Rob. So our ability as educators to bring youth

into a space like this, where they really have to have an opportunity to experiment and fail

and have that be a learning experience, not a negative experience, like in school, means

that you need to have a space where it can be youth only. It doesn’t mean there’s not

educators there, like us, but we’re there to support them. We’re not there for our own

personal interests. And that’s why I think the comments that Philip made last week, which

he’s made in the past, but he made more clearly last week about the possibility of making a

mixed-age grid and having that replace Teen Second Life. Potentially revolutionary, both for

what it means for education in Second Life, as well as those who are interested in just

working with youth who are in their own space.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I’d like to turn to the Teen Second Life discussion, but before we

do that, there’s another issues that I’d like to bring up, which probably both of you struggle

with, and that’s the issue of control in the following sense. I deal a lot with more of the

corporate community, the enterprise community, and they worry about sex. And I see that

there’s been quite a discussion about sex, pornography, in Second Life, in the backchat and

that it definitely causes some concern to corporations who are thinking about having a

Second Life presence and don’t want to be associated with that type of activity.

David, I’d really like to start with you on this because I think the U.S. Holocaust Memorial

Museum, you must all be very sensitive to very tricky issues of public image, of racism,

anti-Semitism and just all sorts of very strongly held political, social, cultural beliefs. As you

move toward opening this conversation up and, rather than having people view passively,

you’re giving them a voice. How do you make sure you’re keeping the conversation under

control?

DAVID KLEVAN: I know it’s a great question. It’s the challenge that I think any public

institution faces, if you really want people to meaningfully engage in dialogue about your

topic. And, in our case, we’re an institution, like I said, that’s dedicated not only to exploring

the implications of the history of the Holocaust, but also we’re very concerned with issues of

current genocide and genocide prevention, confronting hatred and anti-Semitism. You can’t

really engage people in action around those things, if you’re not willing to engage them in

genuine conversation. And the challenge is always keeping people on topic. We’re the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and so obviously whatever we do is going to be

rooted in this history.

And it’s a balancing act. What we have on our Sim right now, visitors can listen to audio,

view video, but really one of the only places where they have the opportunity to truly create

something unique is really in the form of text, in the form of a comment board at the end of

the exhibit. And, even there, when people post comments, they get reviewed before they go

up because we don’t want hate speech up there. We don’t want things that are going to be

there solely for the purpose of offending. Yet, at the same time, we don’t want to censor

things based necessarily on political speech, if it’s relevant to the topic at hand.

Tomorrow we plan to host a public program in our Sim, and we’re going to take questions. I

mean I think that Second Life, in many ways, is not unlike the Real World. If you don’t give

people a reason to keep coming back, they have no reason to come back. You want them to

be able to participate, and, when they participate, you want them to be able to participate as

fully as possible. I hope that someday we’ll be able to have programs where members of our

group in Second Life can actually build things together, and I hope that we get there.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Great. I see we’re coming toward the end of our time, and I would

like to address the issue that I mentioned at the top of the show regarding Philip Rosedale’s

comments on possibly shutting down Teen Second Life. And something I actually see as

being a separate issue: possibly allowing the main grid to be open to all ages. At some

point, I’d love to get a lawyer on the show to talk about some of the risks of letting kids into

the main grid, but that’s another time. Right now I guess I’ll start, Barry, with you. I

understand you have some fairly strong feelings about the value of maintaining a World

exclusively for teens and not shutting down Teen Second Life. Can you talk a little bit about

your view on that?

BARRY JOSEPH: Sure, I’d be happy to. I mean, if Linden Lab turns Second Life into a

mixed-age grid--and I should pause a moment to say nothing is definite or clear at this point;

Philip just said it was a direction--but if Linden Lab does turn Second Life into a mixed-age

grid, this doesn’t mean we should presume that the need has passed for Teen Second Life.

In fact, I would argue that just the opposite’s true, that the promise offered by Teen Second

Life has yet to be realized. It’s essentially the difference between protecting youth and

supporting youth. I mean Teen Second Life was made for the former, to keep kids safe,

which is great, but focusing on nothing else sells them short in the end.

Supporting youth means recognizing, for example, that Teen Second Life offers youth the

opportunity to own land, to create and sell products, offer services and become civic leaders

and stuff like that. And some might say the same is true for adults in Second Life, and they’d

be right. But the difference here is that adults can do the same thing offline. Youth cannot.

Their ability to move and think as they choose are dramatically curtailed. In fact, where most

youths spend their days in schools, they’re not permitted to even go to the bathroom without

permission from an adult.

In Teen Second Life, however, they’re in charge of their own destiny. So as a result, the

possibilities for using a youth-led space, to learn how to shape their public personal and

their roles in society, in a safe way, are unprecedented. And, add to that the remarkable

constructive as possibilities for learning by doing. You have an unusual package for

developing Twenty-First Century leaders that we all need in our society, that are hard to find

outside this space.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: And actually I notice here in the backchat, Rik Riel,

Rik Panganiban, who is one of your colleagues at Global Kids, puts in the backchat: We’re

running an online dialogue on rezed.org about the grid merge. So those who are interested--

BARRY JOSEPH: If you don’t mind my saying--

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Go right ahead.

BARRY JOSEPH: --Daniel Voyager is the one facilitating the conversation, the youth who

was--

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Oh, fantastic!

BARRY JOSEPH: --supposed to be on earlier, but couldn’t be on. So if you missed hearing

his voice now, you can go hear it on rezed.org, r e z e d.org.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. I’m just looking. We have a number of other questions

here. I see actually there are a lot of comments--I referred to No Child Left Behind, and that

fired up the educator crowd a little bit. So I’ll have to be careful.

BARRY JOSEPH: Yeah, they like to get fired up about that.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah, I’ll have to be careful when I mention that. Let me just look;

we’ve got a few other actions here. Well, I guess one thing I definitely want to get in before

we end the show is, tomorrow a big day for you, David, and the Museum.

DAVID KLEVAN: That’s correct.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Can you talk a little bit about that and what your plans are and

whether there’s any Second Life component to International Holocaust Remembrance Day?

DAVID KLEVAN: Yeah, absolutely. Tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance

Day. It’s the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. This is memorialization that was

created by the United Nations, I think, about two years ago. Actually, no, in 2005. And we’re

going to be actually holding our first ever live program on our Sim in Second Life tomorrow

at 12:00 P.M. Second Life time, 3:00 P.M. eastern time. The program is going to be a

historian presentation called Reporting On Kristallnacht, Propaganda And The Press. And

Ann Mellon, who is an educator and historian at the Museum, will be giving a brief

presentation and holding a question and answer session about how both the German press

and the American press responded to the events of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

We, of course, also have a live program at the Museum here in D.C. at 11:00 A.M. And, also

for those of you in New York, like Barry and some of the folks up at Global Kids, we have a

traveling exhibition about Nazi medicine and race science called Deadly Medicine: Creating

The Master Race. And that actually opened at the United Nations Building today, and it’ll be

there through March 22nd. So we’ll have a number of things in the Real World, as well as in

Second Life, and I encourage everybody to join us tomorrow. Again, it’s an experiment for

us. We haven’t tried it before so we’re very much excited to see how this turns out.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: And I imagine that would be of considerable interest to the kids

involved, Barry, with your program, making the Consent game that explores some of the

similar issue that have arisen in the United States.

BARRY JOSEPH: Absolutely.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Okay. Well, Barry and David, thanks so much for coming on.

Actually, Barry, what’s up with you next? We have another minute for that.

BARRY JOSEPH: I appreciate the opportunity, Robert.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Yeah, sorry about that.

BARRY JOSEPH: Let me share with you folks what we have coming down the pike. No, no

worries. Maybe just a few highlights because of time being tight. RezEd was already

mentioned, but for those who don’t know, it’s the hub for learning in Virtual Worlds, launched

last March in Beta. We just hit our fifteen-hundredth member this past weekend. Our twice a

month podcast series has coming up a conversation between Henry Jenkins and Mimi Ito, a

report on Panwapa. That’s Sesame Street Workshop’s Teen World, and our reports from

the Field Museum about how they’re using Virtual World strategies. We also are going to

launch in March our first quarterly in-world event, and we’re working with the Games

Learning In Society Conference this June, to have the first in-person RezEd conference.

I’ll also mention that, after 18 months, our D.I.D.I. Initiative will come to a close, which is our

partnership with Youth Adventure, funded by the Robert Johnson Foundation, to look at

social entrepreneurship around health issues. Our third year of our virtual video program is

in high gear. These youth who are making machinima around global issues are about to

pick their topic, and just this month their video from the first year trials were hit 10,000 views

on YouTube.

And finally, our Second Life curriculum, which I mentioned, is available on rezed.org, and

that’s part of our capacity building program, to help organizations, like David’s and other

institutions, figure out how to use Virtual Worlds to achieve their mission, to help young

people become leaders of not just tomorrow but today.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: Great stuff. I thought I was busy. It sounds like you’ve got a full

plate there. So thank you, Barry Joseph, of Global Kids--

BARRY JOSEPH: Thank you, Robert.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: --and thank you, David Klevan, from the United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum.

DAVID KLEVAN: Thank you. It’s my pleasure.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: I hope we’ll see you both again on Metanomics. In the interest of

full disclosure, I guess I am just getting used to being a journalist. I probably should say this.

My aunt, Sarah Bloomfield, is the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum, and I figured I’d just get that out there, in case anyone worried that somehow

tainted my independence. But I wish you all the best of luck. And, Sarah, if David ever

shows this to you, hi, and we’ll talk soon.

So now we turn to the segment of our show called Connecting The Dots. We had hoped to

have Chris Collins, educator extraordinaire in Second Life, known by the name

Fleep Tuque. Unfortunately, she was unable to attend today. I’m hoping that we will post her

comments on a blog or get her on very soon. I will take this moment to mention something

else, which is a Call For Papers from the Journal Of Virtual Worlds Research. The theme of

this special issue is Virtual Worlds: Technology, Economy and Standards. This is a special

issue in which we’re looking to examine the often hidden relations between technology,

economy and standards in Virtual Worlds. The issue editors are Yesha Sivan, who has been

on Metanomics before, from Metaverse Labs Ltd. and Shenkar College; Jean Gelissen,

from Philips Research, and myself, Robert Bloomfield, from Cornell University; so

technology, economy and standards. You can guess I’m the economy guy. Jean is

technology. Yesha is standards and is actually heading up the mission.

From the Call For Papers, I’d just like to read a few little bits: Virtual Worlds are destined to

become big, big in the sense of meaningful, influential and making money for various

current and new players. Every aspect of our lives will be affected by Virtual Worlds. Beyond

being another medium, Virtual Worlds will be part of our regular lives. They’re going to

enhance, improve and better our quality of life, much like the internet. Virtual Worlds will

allow us to do traditional things more effectively and do other things anew.

So just a couple quick things I’d like to mention. If you’re wondering what some topics might

be specific standards or family of standards that could impact Virtual Worlds, economic

analyses of specific standards for specific firms, legal aspects of Virtual Worlds and then

moving more into the economics externalities of the economics of Virtual Worlds and the

like.

Finally, I’d like to emphasize one last very important bit. The editors of this issue specifically

encourage short papers on specific examples, past, present or future. If you need to use

jargon or acronyms, please spell them out and explain. Assume readers are versed with

various aspects of Virtual Worlds, but not necessarily technology, economics or standards.

So I think this is something where we can have a lot, especially I know most of you,

because this is such a new environment for all of us, we’re working on our one particular

project. We’re working on overcoming one particular challenge or taking advantage of one

particular opportunity. That fits very well with short pieces that are being very specific.

These can be think pieces, essays and the like. So we ask that you submit an abstract or

expression of interest, limited to one page, by the end of March, March 30th, 2009. I do

hope that you will take us up on this offer and help us fill this journal with great stuff and

build up the academic content addressing Virtual Worlds.

Next week our guest list is a little bit uncertain, but we know of one guest so far,

Tony O’Driscoll, of Duke University, will be joining us, and we will let you know more details

as we get there. This is Rob Bloomfield, from Cornell University, saying goodbye, and I will

see next week. Bye bye.

Document: cor1047.doc

Transcribed by: http://www.hiredhand.com

Second Life Avatar: Transcriptionist Writer