For my holiday greeting this year, I decided to go all social media-y and create an animated reading of my winter poem "Gold." I've embedded the video above, but I recommend looking at it full screen in HD from the original YouTube version. I hope you like it! Created using the awesome Prezi presentation web…
Category: Web/Tech
EnerCities: first Facebook “serious game” on sustainable urban development
Dylan Nagel of Paladin Studios sends out the news that the public beta version of EnerCities has been released, reportedly the first "serious game" to be hosted on Facebook. With support from the European Commission, the goal of our project is to raise energy awareness among young people around the world through the gameplay. I…
Conscience Unconference explores intersection of social media and human rights
This Saturday, December 5, I will be participating in the "Conscience Unconference" at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. This looks to be a very interesting gathering of museum professionals, activists, educators and academics to discuss "problems, practicalities, and opportunities of using social media to further the missions of 'institutions of conscience' —…
“Transmedia Challenge” Game Show for New Media Education
This weekend, I got to watch and participate in the "World Series of Tubing" an augmented-reality game show that pits two contestants in a competition to see who can present the most popular YouTube viral video before a live studio audience. It was a wacky good time, but it also made me think about possibilities…
Do virtual worlds support or hold back marginalized youth?
Today was the last day of the "I Dig Zambia" virtual summer camp, and I have been reflecting on how our Global Kids teens participated in the program. For the past two weeks, eleven of our Global Kids teens have been going through a virtual summer camp in Teen Second Life with eight other teens…
My Metaplace World: Now embeddable!
Here's my first world I created in Metaplace that I can now embed here (or anywhere on the web)! This is a pretty revolutionary way to move virtual worlds from "walled gardens" to places situated in the wider social web. Embedding can increase traffic to your world, let you more easily hang out with friends,…
Teens show off their digital media chops at first NYC Youth Tech Fest at New School
Congrats to the 100-some teens from all over New York City who participated in the first NYC Youth Digital Media & Technology Festival at the New School. The daylong festival spotlighted the growing movement among teenagers in New York and nationally to design video games, films and other digital tools to advance social causes in…
Playing with Bitstrips: the Web2.0 funny pages
I have been playing with Bitstrips, the online comic creation and sharing service that we have been using at Global Kids. It's dead simple and a lot of fun to play with. And it's a great tool for getting our youth to tell simple stories in an engaging way.
(o.o): First Annual NYC Digital Youth Media & Tech Fest this Saturday (June 27) at New School!
I'm excited to announce that this Saturday, my group Global Kids is participating in the First Annual NYC Digital Youth Media & Technology Festival taking place on June 27 at the New School in NYC. The daylong festival will spotlight the growing movement among teenagers in New York and nationally to design video games, films…
Playing with YouTube Annotations
I like the new "Annotations" feature on YouTube. Opens up interesting possibilities for contexualizing video content in interesting ways, from adding speech bubbles to highlighting certain parts of the shot for the viewer. Now anyone can create a popup music video! Here's my first experiment with using annotations, using a video of me getting body…