I just saw this on the War Child website: War Child and Habbo are teaming up for what promises to be the largest online protest ever. On 21st September, UN International Day of Peace, teens will gather in Habbo hotel to raise awareness about the effects of war. Habbo is a virtual community of millions…
Category: Civil Society
State Dept & Youtube join forces to spur citizen videos on democracy
The United States State Department, YouTube and a host of non-profits, educational institutions and media companies are collaborating on an interesting civic engagement project entitled "Democracy: Your Voice. Your Video." The project challenges amateur videographers from around the world to submit three-minute videos answering the question "Democracy is…" Lots of interesting aspects to this project. …
Crossing the Metaversal Divide: Second Life teens exchange text messages with Ugandan girl on her cell phone
The screenshot here is kind of hard to parse so let me describe it. A young person (represented by the green furry) in Teen Second Life is composing a text message to send to another teen in Uganda that she will recieve on her cell phone as an SMS message. Meanwhile my avatar (the purple…
Madeleine Albright speaking at UT Austin and Second Life (video)
Tonight, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin hosted an address by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. I got to watch and participate in this event at the GSD&M Idea City Island Amphitheatre in Second Life (teleport SLURL). It was a good crowd for a foreign…
Using my geek powers for good: a Global Kids teambuilding exercise
Yesterday at Global Kids, we did a team-building activity called "The 2008 Street Fair: The Fall Collection." Organized by my colleagues Dominique and Sandip, the game was actually quite challenging and nuanced. We divided up into five teams of about eight people, who were each given a bag containing two items. The rules were as…
Notes from my talk on “Beyond Best Practices: Taking Non-profits to the Next Level in Second Life” at SLCC
For those that weren’t able to be there, here’s a quick rundown of what I spoke about at the Non-profit Commons mini-track at the Second Life Community Convention this past weekend in Tampa, Florida. While this year’s non-profit track had less folks participating than last year, we had some great exchanges with non-profit innovators like…
SLCC Wrap-up: Virtual educators dominate the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa
The three day Second Life Community Convention from September 5-7, 2008 in Tampa, Florida firmly made the case that some of the most vital and innovative work in the virtual world is being done by the education sector. With 400 some real world participants (plus others beaming in virtually) converging on the grand Marriott Waterside…
Rafi’s feedback to Linden Lab on improving Second Life for educators
Here’s Rafi Santo giving his feedback to Linden Lab during a session today in Tampa at the Second Life Community Convention on how to improve Second Life for educators. Claudia Linden was there carefully taking notes of everyone’s comments during this feedback session. It’s great to see a concrete example of how that the Linden…
Metanomics’ Beyers Sellers explains “Why Johnny Can’t Rez” at SLCC / SLEDcc ’08
Beyers Sellers, Professor at Johnson School at Cornell University and host of the popular "Metanomics" talk show in SL, gave a really neat keynote address on “Why Johnny Can’t Rez.” Beyers addressed the difficult issue of how to convince your higher-ups and colleagues to support your virtual education project. It was a nice capstone to…
Barry Joseph talks about the “Ludic Life” and why Second Life can’t tip
Barry Joseph, director of the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, delivered a rapid-fire, funny, and challenging talk on "Why Second Life Can’t Tip: The Power and Perils of Living La Vida Ludic." His talk described how Second Life is part of a larger revolutionary trend toward the integration of "life" and "play" that he…