While I was in Chicago this week, I met up with some nice folks at the incredible Field Museum (you will recall my previous adventures with their flesh eating beetles.) I learned that they are working with several other research and academic institutions to launch very soon something called the "Encyclopedia of Life." The Encyclopedia…
Category: Civil Society
MacArthur & HASTAC fund 17 badass digital civic engagement and education projects
Picture of Sustainable South Bronx FabLab Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of being among an energetic group of educators, tech developers, activists, and researchers representing 17 new digital media and learning projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the HASTAC consortium. I’m extremely proud of Global Kid’s own winning project — RezEd — a…
NetSquared offering $100K for Mash-ups for Social Change
My buddy Glitteractica sends out a cool challenge being promoted by the NetSquared conference for technology mash-ups for social change. If you have a cool idea combining different web, mobile or other tech that meets some need in your community, draft it up and send it in to NetSquared by March 14. Here’s some examples:…
Global Kids receives new grant to create social network for virtual world educators
I am in Chicago right now representing Global Kids, who is one of 17 recipients of a grant for our work on digital media and learning. We received $72,000 to support the creation of "RezEd" a new social networking site and blog to support educators who use virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games for…
Video preview of “ICED” immigration computer game
I just threw together a quick video preview of the first level of the computer game "ICED," which I just posted about on this blog. "ICED" — which stands for "I Can End Deportation" — allows the player to step into the shoes of five immigrant teens and find out what it takes to avoid…
“ICED” computer game teaches about US immigration laws
Heidi Boisvert, the lead designer of the "ICED" computer game, sends us news that "ICED" has been officially released for download, after more than two years of work. "ICED" — which stands for "I Can End Deportation" — allows the player to step into the shoes of five immigrant teens and find out what it…
Global Kids on ABC News!
I finally got a chance to see the ABC news story from last week about Global Kids. The story focused on our new program teaching science in a real life classroom in Brooklyn using Second Life. Nice coverage of our work, which my colleagues Barry Joseph and Joyce Bettencourt are leading up. Good stuff, guys!
Learning for Failure: The MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Grantee Meeting
I had the honor of being among a small of incredibly smart, dedicated researchers and practitioners who are all supported by the Digital Media and Learning Initiative of the MacArthur Foundation. About 70 of us gathered from Thursday to Friday at USC to talk about issues of common concern, share progress on our respective projects,…
Cool trends: Second Life corporate builds donated to charitable causes
In July of 2007, Starwood Hotels announced that their first experiment with virtual worlds, the Virtual Aloft Hotel, had come to completion. Normally when such things happen, the corporation just has the island and the build derez into the ether and everyone congratulates themselves on a job well done. Starwood decided to do something different…
I’m on the Teen Grid!
My work avatar "Rik Gkid" was successfully created and transferred over to the Teen Grid today! I have to say that being ported over from the Main Grid over to Teen SL felt a bit like going into exile in a strange land. What is this giant volcano? Where are all the ad farms and…