May 2009 Archives

Science and math are integral to all jobs these days...whether it is basic budgeting, measuring results or analyzing data to make better decisions.  Girls and women have shied away from math and science courses for a variety of reasons that are mostly cultural. They lived down to our expectations...but research is finding that girls can excel at both math and science -- and bring a fresh perspective to careers that use those analysis skills.

And the environmental movement needs women's fresh perspectives!

To give girls a jumpstart on environmentally friendly careers, the "Green Jobs for Girls in the Future" program at West Virginia University at Parkersburg, and will encourage young women to take classes in science, technology, engineering and math to help prepare them for future careers.

"This is an opportunity for young girls to learn about something new, to try something different," said community representative Sarah Townsend. "They need to understand, you need to work hard and you need a lot of encouragement."

More than 200 students in grades 6-8 are expected to attend the event

"The whole point is to encourage and enable girls to go into career areas of math and science," said Wendy Tuck, executive director of the Volunteer Action Center. "We also want them to think about jobs that can support them and their families."

The day-long event is scheduled for Oct. 16, 2009 at West Virginia University at Parkersburg and will feature about 20 career stations that will explore different ecologically friendly jobs and the math and science required for them.

The 15-20 speakers will be community volunteers, professionals and role-models who will explain their professions and the steps necessary to succeed in those fields.

The program will be funded through a $7,000 grant from the American Association of University Women and will be supplemented by funds from WVU-P, the Volunteer Action Center and Wood County Schools. The total cost of the "Green Jobs for Girls in the Future" will be about $19,000. "That money mostly will pay for transportation, food and material costs," Tuck said.

For more information on the "Green Jobs for Girls in the Future" career day, contact the Volunteer Action Center at (304) 424-3457.

San Diego Gas and Electric Partners With Google PowerMeter

Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provides customers with access to their home electricity consumption right on their personal iGoogle homepage. Google is currently testing Google PowerMeter with a number of utilities and plan to expand the rollout later this year.

• Analyze: Get better information about how you use energy and what you can do to be more efficient.
• Save: Reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint by making smart decisions about your energy use.
• Share: Strike up a little friendly competition to see how your energy consumption compares to your friends and neighbors.

Beta partners are located around the country and the world: Kentucky, Florida, India, SAN DIEGO, Canada, Texas, Michigan,

Google, which is in the midst of creating widgets for allowing consumers to see and monitor their power consumption, said that SDG&E is one of eight initial utility partners launching with the Internet giant.

The partnership will allow San Diego Gas & Electric customers with smart meters to access that smart meter information via Google and its PowerMeter widget software. Google said that its widgets are only available to a limited group of partners, but will roll out more widely later this year with other partners.

How the GoogleMeter works

Virtual Ability Island provides the home for our new resident orientation and training, developed for people with disabilities or chronic illnesses.  Here, new residents can learn Second Life^® fundamentals in an accessibility-friendly environment, and existing residents can receive ongoing training and information about health-related issues and support groups.  This island was created through a partnership with the Alliance Library System.

Through the new account signup process on our web site, or through the secondlife.com Community Gateway program, new residents have their avatar arrive at the beginning of the New Resident Orientation Course on Virtual Ability Island when they log in to Second Life^® for the first time.

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 Virtual Ability

University of Southern California Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Communication.

The Network Culture Project (NCP)   examines the rapidly changing and evolving space of network culture through the study of virtual worlds, online games, and social networking. The researchers believe that we are seeing a fundamental shift in the ways that knowledge is being created, disseminated, and shared, resulting in the emergence of new large scale knowledge economies that fundamentally transform the way we need to think about learning, interacting, and living in virtual spaces.

The worlds we study and the social life of these virtual spaces give us a glimpse into what the future might hold as new media continues to evolve and as computing power transforms virtual words from platforms into media. The task is to begin the process of creating new theories and methods, as well as constructing new analytic categories that can help us make sense of these spaces as they emerge as an increasing part of everyday life and experience.

Projects include:

Learning in the 21st Century 

Modern Prometheus is a game designed to teach students about issues of science, technology and ethics through experiential learning.

Situated within the context of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Modern Prometheus encourages learning about ethics, particularly as they relate to science and technology, by immersing students in an imaginative play space and requiring them to make choices that affect game play. By making ethics about the choices they make and the effects of those choices, rather than prescriptive rules for conduct or behaviors, students can better understand the complexities of ethical judgment and better evaluate their decisions and how their decisions affect others.

Tweens and Reproductive Health in Virtual Worlds

Tweens and Reproductive Health in Virtual Worlds is an effort to gain insights on how tweens, an understudied but growing group of online players, approach the issues of sexuality within a virtual world. 

This study will examine the sexual content and related behaviors in tween conversations in a virtual world called Whyville.net, which is populated by over 2 million registered players between ages 10-16 - thus a prime audience for our developmental topic. Access to Whyville is free and players can spend time participating in science activities, creating their own avatars and socializing with others through multi-player games, chat spaces, newspaper articles, email, trading (Kafai & Giang, 2008). 

This project, led by Douglas Thomas,  is an effort to better understand what role philanthropic organizations might play in the context of virtual worlds. As virtual worlds grow in size and scope so do the opportunities for engagement with the players who visit them, the communities they build, and the spaces they inhabit. In order to access the ways in which foundations might be integrated into virtual worlds, we ask the following three questions to help us understand the purpose of philanthropy in virtual worlds:

• How do we define "public good" in the context of virtual worlds?
• How do we use the capabilities of virtual worlds to further the goals of foundations?
• How do you build "real world" connections between physical and virtual spaces?

Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media

This journal, edited by Douglas Thomas, is an international journal publishing innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media.

Network Culture Project

http://networkculture.usc.edu

Terra Nova is a weblog about virtual worlds.

Virtual Worlds are also known as synthetics worlds, MMOs, MMORPGs, Social Worlds, MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. Terra Nova authors include scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines.  Additional information about individual authors, contributors, and guests can be found via the hyperlinks on the right hand column of the main page.

Guest authors: Terra Nova likes to have guest authors, especially those who contribute new voices and perspectives to the blog. They prefer authors who have either published scholarship relevant to virtual worlds or are currently engaged professionally in the design of virtual worlds.  If that sounds like you, please contact Terra Nova by email.

http://terranova.blogs.com

In the game, you play as (become) an animal in an natural eco-system.

Web Earth Online is a multi player online game where you play as animals in an environmental web based world of nature. 

The game is based on reality and it is real time and multi-user. Their focus has been on the creation of multi-user networked computer games. Web Earth Online is a game that merges many of our interest into a single game.  .

www.WebEarthOnline.com

LiveWires Design in Canada has produced a CD-ROM game, Missing, which is based on the case of a boy who was lured into a sexually abusive situation. The game helps children age 11-14 learn to recognize the tactics a predator uses to lure his victims.

3,000,000 children have played the game in the United States and Canada.

LiveWires also produces "Mirror Image, a game for Teens age 13-15.
 

"The alternate reality of WORLD WITHOUT OIL is not fantasy, it's a very real possibility," says Writerguy.

Creative Director Ken Eklund. "And the game challenge is one of imagination. No one person or small group can hope to figure out the complex rippling effects of an oil shock, but the collective imagination can. And understanding it is a serious, positive step toward preventing it."

WORLD WITHOUT OIL will challenge players and player communities to engage the creative and collaborative skills that will be tested in an oil shock, and to document their ideas on the web. The game will honor outstanding player contributions with WWO None-Ton Awards: offsets of one metric ton (2,204.6 lbs) of carbon dioxide, accomplished through increased energy efficiency implemented by CarbonFund.Org. The game will bestow a total of 100 such awards, making WORLD WITHOUT OIL a "carbon-neutral" effort. To assist middle and high school teachers who want to incorporate the game into class activities, the designers have established a web page:

World Without Oil - Alternate Reality Game

http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/teach

Real Lives is a wonderful simulation of what life can be like once you are born somewhere in the world.

Real Lives is a life simulation that gives you the opportunity to learn how people really live in other countries. Real Lives is a truly unique, content rich and empathy-building real world, real life simulation that challenges your life skills (not your hand-eye coordination) as you make difficult, high-stakes choices that lead to your success, or failure.

Sean Trundle of Pop Matters said "It's packed with plenty of facts about the lives of people in each country, and there are links for users to follow to get more information if they want it. I've led about nine lives so far, and even though this software is designed for children I've learned a good deal about each place I lived, including the United States. From Australia to Uzbekistan, you can try walking in someone else's shoes for a while."

You can check Real Lives out at:

https://www.reachandteach.com/store/index.php?action=item&id=74

The Tutor/Mentor Connection operates from at least seven web sites that we own, and hundreds of other sites owned by others. In the Tutor/Mentor Connection.org site we host more than 1500 links, pointing to information created by others around the world. Our goal is to help you learn to use that information to expand your understanding of where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs are needed, the differences between different types of programs, and the actions people in business, philanthropy, government and other sectors can do to help world-class tutor/mentor programs operate in every high poverty neighborhood.

The Tutor/Mentor Connection
http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/

Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network (VATSIM) is a virtual world includes Air Traffic Control Centers along with simulated commercial flights.  Add into the mix the exhaustive training regime controllers undergo, and there comes a sense of sacrifice or at least commitment.

The HipBone Project is an ambitious, visionary project to create thinking tools and encourage cognitive strategies.

HipBone Games have been used for ice-breaking in Rl and online conferences.

The HipBone Games

A style of thinking, a way of playing, a tool for problem solving, a new approach to conflict resolution. A HipBone Game is a game of creative leaps between thoughts. The thoughts themselves are the "moves" the players make, and the "links" they claim between them are what make the game challenging and enjoyable -- and the process itself a powerful tool for uncovering tacit knowledge, while building bonds of collegiality, respect and friendship between players.

A HipBone board is like a mind-map, in that you place ideas in circles on the game-board, linked by those creative leaps of thought to other ideas which other players have come up with - but it pushes the limits of creativity farther than mind-mapping, by providing a "tight" formal structure in which the links must be made.

HEALTH GAMES

Metalloman is a superhero game about the science of the human body.

NanoSwarm is a game about Diabetes Education.

Re-Mission lets the player be a robot fighting cancer.

Whyville is an online world whose citizens learn art history, journalism, civics, and economics

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

Ayiti: the Cost of Life simulates life in Haiti. In Oxfam's Refugee you play a refugee fleeing a drought.

Last Exit Flight  explores the problems facing refugees,

Norwegian Asylum Game, explores refugee experience as  migrants try to reach Norway from Liberia and Iran.

Third-World Farmer bills itself as a "thought-provoking simulation".

Tropical America, the only survivor of a massacre searches for the evidence that will bring justice to their village.

Teach A Man To Fish: The Game, is a Sim City style game where individuals get to try to run an entrepreneurial school - one that uses profit-making school businesses as a platform for teaching entrepreneurship and livelihood skills.

With a fixed amount of land and resources, should you set up a poultry unit, plant it with vegetables or set up a fruit processing unit? 

Playing the game at the very least should prove an education in business for players - and ideally reinforce in them the merits of our own approach.

http://www.teachamantofish.org.uk

http://secondlife.com/education/

http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Institutions_and_Organizations_in_SL

The Second Life communal whiteboard:

http://metalab.blogspot.com/2006/06/communal-whiteboard.html secondlife://Gourdneck/205/191/724

The United Nations' Hunger game, one of the "stars" of the movement, is available for play in English, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese and Polish. 

PeaceMaker ($20) is an impressive game designed to promote peace through geopolitical understanding of the Middle East - a topic also explored in Global Conflict: Palestine.

MTV's Darfur is Dying, players experience the fight for survival in Darfur, Sudan.

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict's A Force More Powerful teaches techniques of non-violent civil resistance to activists.

Charles "Hipbone" Cameron (April 2007)

Why play?  Well, play turns out to be the human "operating system" that children use for their most successful learning, and that our keenest minds (think Einstein, Picasso) use to express their mastery.  So it's not childish or a cop-out to play, it's an excellent strategy, close kin to creativity and thinking outside the box.

Having said that, it's also the case that we live in an increasingly play- and game-oriented culture -- and just as business has begun the long swing towards taking social obligations seriously, so the games industry has been figuring out how to provide serious games, and Games for Change in particular.

Charles "Hipbone" Cameron suggests: Let's talk about games we've played, games we'd like to see, games as education, games as therapy - games as they impact our lives as social entrepreneurs