FTC's milestone report on virtual worlds

This is pioneering stuff on the part of the US government. The Federal Trade Commission today sent to Congress its close study of 27 online virtual worlds – 14 for children under 13 and 13 aimed at teens and adults – looking at the level of sexually explicit and violent content and what the VWs were doing to protect children from it. I think it's important for parents to keep in mind when reading the study or just the highlights here that "content" in virtual worlds means user-generated content (which is why, in "Online Safety 3.0," we put so much stress on viewing children as stakeholders in their own well-being online and teaching them to be good citizens in their online and offline communities). Here are some key findings:

The FTC found at least one instance of either sexually or violently explicit content in 19 of the 27 worlds – heavy (sex or violence) in five of them, moderate in four, and "only a low amount in the remaining 10 worlds in which explicit content was found."

Of the 14 VWs for kids under 13, 7 contained no explicit content, 1 had a moderate amount, and 6 had a low amount.

Nearly all the explicit content found in the kids' VWs "appeared in the form of text posted in chat rooms, on message boards, or in discussion forums."

The Commission found more explicit content in VWs aimed at teens or adults, finding it in 12 of the 13 in this category, with a heavy amount in 5 of them, moderate in 3, and a low amount in 4 of the 13.

Not just text: Half the explicit content found in the teen- and adult-oriented virtual worlds was text-based, while the other half appeared as graphics, occasionally with accompanying audio.

The report goes into measures these 27 VWs surveyed take to keep minors away from explicit content, including "age screens" designed to keep minors from registering below a site's minimum age (what the FTC calls "only a threshold measure"); "adults only" sections requiring subscriptions or age verifications (see "'Red-light district' makes virtual world safer"); abuse reporting and other flagging of inappropriate content; human moderation; and some filtering technology. "The report recommends that parents and children become better educated about online virtual worlds" and that virtual-world "operators should ensure that they have mechanisms in place to limit youth exposure to explicit content in their online virtual worlds." In the two pages of Appendix A (of the full, 23-page report + appendices), you'll find a chart of all the virtual worlds the FTC reviewed. [See also my VW news roundup last week and "200 virtual worlds for kids."]

This is a great start. As purely user-driven media, virtual worlds are a frontier for research on online behavior. The FTC was charged by Congress "merely" with determining the level of harmful content, not behavior – I really think because adults continue to think in a binary, either-or way about extremely fluid environments that are mashups of content and behavior. Where is it really just one or the other, what is "content" in social media, and how do we define "harmful"? We also need to define "virtual worlds." Some of these properties are largely avatar chat, some are games (with quests), some are worlds with games but not quests in them. Still, we've got some great talking points and very useful data to build on.

Virtual-world news update

A lot of news about virtual worlds has crossed my laptop lately, so – since this is a big growth sector of cyberspace (with the global VW population growing from 186.5 million now to 638 million by 2015, according to Strategy Analytics) – I thought I'd package it up for you....

1. Avatar PR

Now (if not yesterday or last year) is a good time to fold avatars into family discussion about reputations and self-representation online. Even if your child's favorite avatar is waddling around in Club Penguin, it would be good to ask to see the penguin, if you haven't already, talk about that penguin's favorite activities in-world, how many friends it has, and what sorts of things they do together. Why am I telling you all this? Early lessons in social Web spin control – not to mention early prep for the business world.

By the end of 2013, 70% of businesses will have behavior and dress code policies for employees whose online avatars represent their organization," Virtual World News reports. Gartner recently published "Avatars in the Enterprise: Six Guidelines to Enable Success," CNET reports.

As for the littlest VW citizens, Virtual Worlds News recently reported that, at 27% growth between now and 2015, children aged 5-9 are the biggest growth sector of a global virtual world population (which itself will grow from 186 million to 640 million by 2015). VW News was citing Strategy Analytics figures. For insights into day-to-day life in a teen virtual world, check out this YPulse interview with Gaia Online's Joe Hyrkin.

2. Two new arrivals

Israel-based Shidonni.com where kids 4-10 draw and animate their own animal avatars, which can then be turned into real stuffed animals! There's a bit of a Webkinz model, but this is much more appealing to kids because they're the producers. Here's coverage at Virtual Worlds News.

Omaha, Nebraska-based KidCommand.com for 7-to-12-year-olds is a virtual world that aims to teach kids and tweens about the real world so they can help make it better. The company, Green Bein' Productions, Inc., wants to team up with other organizations that work to empower kids (e.g., schools, after-school programs, scouting). Here's Virtual Worlds News.

3. Second Life's booming economy

On average, users of virtual world Second Life spend 100 minutes in-world per visit, adding up to more than 1 billion hours so far, PC World reports. Even more interesting, though, is the virtual world's very real economy. "The equivalent of more than US$1 billion has been transacted between residents in Second Life, who purchase virtual goods and services from one another." The in-world economy grew 54% year-over-year (between third quarter 2008 and third quarter this year), Virtual Worlds News reported more recently. This is a multinational economy: "Users from the United States accounted for 37% of the economy, followed by Germany and Italy at 8% each, France at 7%, and the UK at 5%." Here's a list of dozens of businesses that have a presence in Second Life – in retail, manufacturing, technology, travel, real estate, finance, communications, etc. (I couldn't find anything more recent than this, but I doubt the number has gone down.)

4. Avatars in MySpace

MySpace, which has always been as much a self-expression tool as a social utility is expanding those self-expression features. In an arrangement with the newly profitable teen virtual world Meez Nation, MySpace users can now create avatars, Ad Week reports (CNET mentioned Meez's profitable status).

Meez and MySpace have music and other media sharing in common, Meez CEO John Cahill said in an interview with YPulse. "Our users watch popular videos together, listen and dance to music together, and we're always offering new virtual goods and "Roomz" tied to events like Halloween, for example. See YPulse for more.

5. Virtual worlds in the movies

Hollywood's all over it – not so much making money in virtual worlds as telling stories about them, the San Jose Mercury News reports. There's Second Skin (which I blogged about here), recently released Gamer and Surrogate, James Cameron's Avatar in December, and next year's Tron Legacy from Disney and Christopher Nolan's Inception. [See also "'Red-light district' makes virtual world safer."]

Related link

KZERO, a virtual worlds research and consulting firm in the UK, has a slide show showing more than 10 dozen companies marketing in virtual worlds (with screen shots of their locations) here. [They put out great resources but are not great at returning press calls.]

'Red-light district' makes virtual world safer

San Francisco-based Linden Lab, which runs Second Life, has sequestered adult content and activity in the virtual world onto a new continent called "Zindra." Residents of the virtual world have to verify that they're adults before they can search for anything on Zindra or go there (here's the page that explains how the age verification process works). The entire "world" is now classified as either "Adult," "Mature," or "PG." As Linden Lab explains these, "Adult" is what most of us think of as adult content or activity – sexually-themed or explicit, inappropriate for minors. "Mature" seems to be more about the shopping and socializing, or non-serious, side of virtual life, where there's nothing really inappropriate for kids to see but also where grownups don't particularly want to mix it up with 13-to-17-year-olds (who themselves would probably prefer Teen Second Life for socializing). Linden Lab describes the "Mature" classification this way: "Social and dance clubs, bars, stores and malls, galleries, music venues, beaches, parks (and other spaces for socializing, creating, and learning) all support a Mature designation so long as they don't host publicly promoted adult activities or content." "PG," obviously, is for everyone – the label for all educational and business activity (virtual classes, meetings, talks, etc., where only time zones are a barrier for gatherings of people planet-wide).

"The other day, when I logged back in after quite a few weeks," writes digital-media maven Chris Abraham in AdAge.com about checking back in after all this happened, "Second Life told me so in so many words that if I want to party, I need to explicitly commit myself to that lifestyle; otherwise, I had better just be happy with PG-13. Second Life didn't kick out the brothels and porno theaters, it just put them on a different plane of existence." All of which makes high school classes and other educational programs (see links below) in Second Life much safer and more feasible now (e.g., this from ABC News Brooklyn on science class in Second Life).

For visual aids, here's a 3 min. video interview with Second Life creator Philip Rosedale with little clips from in-world and a PG13-rated look at Zindra (on its opening day, 7/4/09).

Related links

Machinima of Rochester Institute of Technology's virtual campus in Second Life (machinima is video taken in-world, so it looks like animated film)

"US Holocaust Museum in Second Life"

"The Virtual Alamo" museum in Second Life

A video at Teachers.tv in the UK about student projects in and with virtual worlds and my post about it

"School & social media"

"Young practitioners of social-media literacy"

Who's in charge in virtual worlds?

The global population of virtual worlds is growing fast, as is the business of creating and running them (venture capitalists reportedly invested more than $590 million in VWs last year). The question is, when bad stuff happens in VWs - theft, fraud, harassment, etc. - how should it be dealt with? Who's in charge, and how should "the management" set and enforce policy? "Another Perfect World" – a documentary from the Netherlands on what users and eventually humanity will learn from virtual worlds about governance, self-government, and community building – is about "grownup" spaces online, but the way these issues get worked out will certainly affect kids' online worlds as well (kids 5-9 are the fastest-growing demographic in a global VW user base expected to grow more than three-fold to 640 million by 2015 - see my coverage).

We're only at the beginning of this question, so maybe our educational institutions worldwide will have the wisdom to enable children to be part of what society works out – not as guinea pigs but as participants, members and hopefully stakeholders in the health of their own online communities, appropriately supervised but supportive of students' own agency as community members. For example, Quest Atlantis, an educational virtual world and game involving quests (the curriculum) that was designed at Indiana University, has 7 guiding principles (called "social commitments"): social responsibility, personal agency, healthy communities, diversity affirmation, environmental awareness, creative expression, and compassionate wisdom, which frame all activity and behavior in-world. One of the issues I hope QA and other educational VWs will address is social stratification and how power is attained and wielded – which, social-media scholar danah boyd pointed out in a talk she gave this week, is happening no less on the social Web than always has happened offline.

"Another Perfect World" gives examples of several adult virtual worlds that are engaged in fascinating governance experiments. The management of US-based Second Life takes as hands-off an approach as it can, leaving it largely to users to work out disputes, which they sometimes do with real-world detectives and lawyers. South Korea-based Lineage's management takes a similarly hands-off approach, but its users, who are largely Korean and have different cultural expectations of authority and hierarchy (than, e.g., the much more multi-national user population of Second Life) have staged an in-world revolution against the mainly feudal system in Lineage (I'm not sure if its outcomes have totally been worked out). Iceland-based Eve Online's management has undertaken a fascinating experiment, gathering a kind of parliament of players whose "power" (or influence over management) will grow only in proportion to their ability to grow its influence with fellow users in-world. These are, in some ways, advanced "civilizations" that are starting from scratch, where government is concerned.

The questions they are all being forced to consider are: Should users largely govern themselves in these worlds, as is the current modus operandi in most? When should management step in - when property gets stolen or people get harassed? What is management like - a capricious and arbitrary bunch of "Greek gods," enforcers of corporate policy, judge and jury? Will in-world user courts or arbitration boards need to be set up, as Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life parent Linden Lab, predicts? Already, the documentary suggests, it seems clear that a utopian society is no more possible in alternate worlds than it is in this one.

[Readers, pls note that shortly after I posted this, the producers of "Another Perfect World" took their doc off YouTube, so it doesn't seem to be available in full online (I checked a lot of sites). I could only find their own site with a trailer. Tx to Dennis Richards for the heads-up in Twitter.]

My avatar's talk: Online safety 2.0

I - or I should say my avatar Anny Khandr - recently gave some talks about safety on the social Web in the virtual world Second Life. The experiences were great fun and kind of magical on many levels. First, I'm giving my PowerPoint-enabled talk from an easy chair in my family room, using a mic plugged into my laptop. I'm watching myself (or the Anny Khandr cartoon version of me) standing next to my slides before an audience of amazing tech educators around the country, who are all probably listening from easy chairs in their houses too, but at the same time gathered in one place: a beautiful "outdoor" virtual lecture space, complete with stage, screen, benches, and ambient birdsong. We were "gathered" on one of ISTE's islands in Second Life (ISTE for the International Society for Technology in Education, of which both my audience and I are all members).

My, er, Anny's first talk - kindly arranged for by New Jersey tech educator Kevin Jarrett (aka "KJ Hax," who gives teacher tours: see this) - was in a bigger venue and had a substantial audience, but there were problems in the recording process. So the "machinima" you'll see is a more intimate talk I later gave to a small group of avatars/educators, some of whom amazingly came back for seconds! [A machinima is a kind of animated video, or moving screenshots - video recorded within virtual worlds - and can range in subject from "action" videos like what you see in videogames to videos of professionals' avatars giving PowerPoint presentations. Quite the range!] The recording of my talks was done by Marianne Malmstrom, aka the extremely clue-filled "Knowclue Kidd," another great teacher in New Jersey. The whole idea, I think, was Peggy Sheehy's. Peggy, literally a rockstar tech educator (a former rock vocalist), teaches in Suffern, N.Y., and on several islands in Second Life, where she/her avatar is known as Maggie Marat. These educators are the real magic of Second Life to me. If you opened your own account at SecondLife.com, created an avatar, and teleported to ISTE Island, you'd experience what I have: the members' seemingly bottomless kindness and patience and what the tech education part of it has to teach about the gift economy (see this entry in Wikipedia).

The talk is best viewed here, but if anyone would like to download this animated 40-min. talk to their laptop as a better way to show it to fellow parents or educators, please feel free to download it here (it's a huge file, so it can be downloaded either in two parts or in full). Email me via anne(at)netfamilynews.org. if you'd like my PPT notes, with links to all sources. If it's a cartoon, it's a serious one - maybe a little boring too, but also a snapshot of the latest research on social Web safety.

Pennsylvania case study: Social-networking risk in context

This is interesting in light of criticism by state attorneys general of the peer-reviewed research in the Internet Safety Technical Task Force report this month: a just-released study from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use (CSRIU). The attorneys general have said the research is outdated (it's actually not, but see the Wall Street Journal) and not enough about predators in social-network sites, so study author Nancy Willard analyzed some data that couldn't be more current: all online predator arrests in Pennsylvania from 2005 through the middle of this month, cited in press releases in Attorney General Tom Corbett's Web site.

In a recent statement, General Corbett said, "I believe this [Task Force] report is incredibly misleading.... The threat is real.... In the last four years, my office has arrested 183 predators, all of whom have used the Internet for the purpose of contacting minors to engage in sexual activity."

No one - in the Task Force report, the research community, or certainly the online-safety field - disagrees that online predation is a risk, and all agree that the attorneys general are performing an important public service in reducing Internet-initiated predation. The risk does need to be put into context, though. A whole lot of parents (those of the 65% of US teens with social-network profiles, according to Pew/Internet) would really like to know how dangerous social networking actually is, since it's so much a part of their kids' lives now.

Willard's analysis looks at 1) Internet-related child sexual exploitation in context (what proportion of overall exploitation involves even the Internet, much less a single social technology on it) and 2) social networking in the context of all online social technologies teens use - chat, IM, etc.

Internet-related child sexual abuse in Pa.

During one year (FY '06-'07) Pennsylvania rape crisis centers and sexual assault programs served 9,934 child victims of sexual abuse, Willard reports.

Over four years (2005 through ’08), the Pennsylvania attorney general's office made 183 arrests concerning Internet-related child sexual abuse through its Child Predator Unit.

Only 8 of the 183 cases involved actual minors (the rest were sting operations involving police posing as minors) - though certainly these arrests may've prevented cases involving minors.

Only 5 of the 183 involved sexual contact.

The only national figure we have is from 2000, when the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that 508 out of 65,000 child sexual exploitation cases were Internet-initiated (where offender and victim "met" for the first time online). [An update from the CACRC is expected to be released soon.]

Social networking compared to other Net technologies

Willard writes that, "because the attorneys general have been focusing their attention on the social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook, this analysis gave special attention to any case that mentioned any activity occurring on either of these two sites." She found that:

144 of the sting operations involved chat, 11 instant messaging, and 9 unspecified in the press releases; the rest were cases of child porn possession.

Only one case involved both a teenager and MySpace, "a re-arrest of a person who had already been arrested through a sting," Willard reports.

One case involved a police officer committing child sex crimes: He "was arrested for sexual abuse of many teens with whom he had interacted in the line of duty. [He] also had a MySpace account with links to teen girls, but there was no assertion that these communications had led to sexual activity."

"One predator in a sting provided the agent with a link to his Facebook page," Willard writes.

"In 5 of the stings that took place in a chat room [no minor involved], reference was made to the fact that the predator had either looked at the 'teen’s' MySpace profile or suggested the 'teen' look at his account."

And the Child Predator Unit itself has, since November 2006, "maintained one or more public sting profiles [depicting teens] on MySpace," but in four years not one arrest has occurred as a result of communications through its fake teen MySpace profiles.

What Willard concluded was that, though a single state's arrests are not a representative sample, "the arrest reports on the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s site fully support the insight and conclusions of the Berkman Task Force Research Advisory Board. The incidents of online sexual predation are rare. Far more children and teens are being sexually abused by family members and acquaintances.... It appears that chat rooms are far less safe than social networking sites and that there is limited inclination and ability of predators to use social networking sites to contact potential teen victims.

"However," she notes, "some predators are apparently looking at non-protected social networking profiles to obtain more information about victims," and more research on the secondary role social and media-sharing sites might be playing is needed. The attorneys general are right - we need more granular understanding of how predators operate - and we can only get that when they make their case records available to the research community. By law, the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, Internet service providers (including social sites) can't share data on users' communications without a subpoena or other court instrument. Once that subpoena has been served, for example by an attorney general's office, that information can be made public. Let's hope the attorneys general, who didn't provide predator data to the Task Force researchers whose report they're criticizing, can soon make it available to the research community.

Let's broaden the discussion

But online crime needs to be seen in context too. Crime must be addressed, but so much of what is happening online - including among teens, of course - is good. Or neutral. Or bad but not necessarily criminal. Increasingly, the Web mirrors all of "real life." Our kids deserve more from parents than fear about it and from the rest of us than overemphasis on crime.

I like the metaphor used by Barry Joseph of Global Kids, a nonprofit organization in New York that does a lot of educational work with youth in virtual worlds. Referring to Teen Second Life, an all-teen virtual world that may merge with the main SL world, he writes, "Why is it important for youth to have their own community? How is this different from a focus on keeping youth safe? The difference is that keeping youth safe, while a desired goal, sells everyone short. Youth deserve support to access their inherent abilities to fully participate in society.

"Let's take the example of a playground," Joseph continues. "What makes a playground safe? Recreational equipment that isn't broken, for example. Barriers to keep out drug dealers or predatory adults. Authority figures to police the space. How would this playground change if it were redesigned to not just keep youth safe but also support their development? The recreational equipment would be selected with an eye toward their developmental impact, such as supporting collaboration or creative play.... The authority figure would do more than just watch and observe but get actively involved, building supporting relationships with the youth, and offer activities designed to engage and develop their abilities."

How might our kids' experience of the social Web change if we were to redesign our collective thinking about it and them - if we saw them less as potential victims and more as participants in and producers of a digital place they can help make safe?

Related links

"How risky are social networking sites?", by Michele Ybarra and Kimberly Mitchell in the journal Pedatrics: "Our findings suggest that 15% of all youth report being targeted by unwanted sexual solicitation, 4% in a social networking site specifically. Similarly, 32.5% of youth report being harassed, either by threats or aggressive comments, or having rumors spread about them," 9% while on a social networking site specifically. "Youth are less likely to be targeted for unwanted sexual solicitation in social networking sites than they are through IM and in chat rooms, however, and are less likely to be a target of harassment on social networking sites than they are through IM."

For even more context (and a view from Washington), head over to Adam Thierer's blog, TechLiberationFront.com.

"New study challenges attorneys general on predator danger," by Larry Magid of CBS/CNET and ConnectSafely.org

"Social networking benefits validated" in the Washington Times

"Serious informal learning: Key online youth study" in NetFamilyNews

"Greatest Internet threat to teens may be teens themselves" - best coverage of Task Force report in the mainstream media I've seen, appropriately in the Los Angeles Times's Health section

"Key crossroads for Net safety: ISTTF report released," my thoughts on the Task Force report

ISTTF report

Virtual Worlds field trip

One of the most interesting comments made at the second-annual Virtual Worlds Conference I attended in L.A. this week was from Jon Landau, producer of Titanic and of a project-in-progress called Avatar. Landau said, "I grew up being taught to worry about 'big brother'; with the Internet we have to worry about little brother." I don't think anybody else heard that quite as acutely as an advocate of children's online safety would. Not only is little brother watching, little brother (of any age, basically everybody on the user-driven, fixed and mobile network) is commenting, uploading, producing, entertaining, collaborating, socializing, and exploring identity, as well as creating imposter profiles, gaming the game system, sending nude phone-snapped photos, etc. We're dealing with a new set of blended conditions, with online life not just mirroring "real life" but changing it as well, in subtle ways we don't yet fully understand.

One thing that's clear from the research but was confirmed (in my head, not yet by speakers) everywhere I turned at the conference: digital ethics and citizenship have to be central to the discussion as we learn how to negotiate this new space where – definitely for kids, in any case - the line between online and offline is fading. Learning how to behave ethically in community whether digital or physical is central to children's well-being online, right now and increasingly as we move forward.

Really exciting projects are going on in and with virtual worlds in schools around the US and world. Check out the collaborative work between schools in California, Japan, and Australia at PacRim Exchange; with libraries in Teen Second Life and youth librarians of the Eye4You Alliance; on virtual islands for public school students (Ramapo Islands) in Teen Second Life; and in Second Life and New York City with nonprofit Global Kids, which aims to help "transform urban youth into successful students as well as global and community leaders" (I want to zoom in on some of these powerful projects in future posts).

I spoke with a northern California principal, Patti Purcell of Bel Aire Elementary School, about Bel Aire's six-week pilot project teaching students digital citizenship "in-world" and in the classroom with the help of children's virtual world Dizzywood. Patti told me she felt students needed a space where they could actually practice what they learned in character education, which has long been part of the curriculum. One lesson was in collaborative tree-planting. Dizzywood co-founder Scott Arpajian told me certainly any child can plant a tree in Dizzywood, but the "game" is designed so that planting gets "exponentially faster [and a lot more fun] when they help each other out." Students are given time to explore the virtual world (they're given "agency," a sense of place and ownership in-world), but the experience is structured too, with in-world activities always followed by classroom discussion. "Graduation" included presentations by the students before an audience of parents who were very interested in how character ed was taught in a virtual world. Patti said, "It's very empowering for a 10-year-old to be able to explain their space to a group of adults." Two other cool elements: students participate in creating their own code of ethics, and Scott told me Dizzywood lets them look "under the hood" - learn about how Dizzywood's techies and graphic designers create its activities and habitat (something aspiring designers and software engineers would be fascinated with).

A few general virtual-world-industry themes I picked up on (signs of where things are headed): not making users download special software, but bringing virtual environments to them right through their Web browsers; whether kid virtual worlds should "grow up" with their users (as has happened with about 10% of Whyville.net's users, now in college); predictions of a merging of social networking and virtual worlds; your avatar going wherever you go on the Web (not locked into a single virtual world); and other signs of interest in or movement toward interoperability.

Going to this conference was a déjà vu kind of experience for me. Though it wasn't just about kid products and services, it felt a lot like Jupiter Media's "Digital Kids" conferences in the late-'90s: a very young industry trying to get a fix on metrics, markets, and competition folding in lots of start-ups, a handful of well-established B2B and B2C companies (Whyville.net, There.com, Second Life, Multiverse) and one or two old, giant media players (e.g., Disney) barreling ahead, seemingly announcing a new "world" about every six months (Pirates of the Caribbean, ClubPenguin acquisition, PixieHollow.com, forthcoming Cars world). Lots of numbers were tossed around (some admitted by the speaker to be educated estimates because research is limited): a current 100 million+ virtual-world residents worldwide, 75% between the ages of 8 and 24, with virtual worlds "about to collide" with the Web's 550 million social networkers worldwide, and a current $1.5 billion market in virtual goods (e.g., weapons in World of Warcraft, clothes and furniture in Second Life). One number that has been researched – by the conference's organizers – is that there are now more than 150 virtual worlds for youth 3-17 either available or in development (see this post).

Related links

"ClubPenguin's newest competition"

"Top 8 workarounds of kid virtual-world users"

"Here comes social gaming"

"Xbox Live with avatars"

"Benefits from having virtual selves"

Virtual World News

'Law 'n' order' in virtual worlds

It's a fledgling concept, but there are some interesting community-policing efforts afoot in virtual worlds such as Second Life, VZones, World of Warcraft, and mobile-phone-based Cellufun for mobile phone users, the Washington Post reports. For example, "in World of Warcraft, a popular online fantasy game, a character who is acting out runs the risk of being attacked by a group of self-appointed sheriffs. While the avatar doesn't face official penalties, the interference from other players can deter future crimes." In one of Worlds.com's worlds, users created a novel sort of virtual scarlet letter: "an animated bird that drops an unpleasant [virtual] substance on the heads of outlaws, known as 'griefers' in virtual-world lingo." There needs to be a flip side too, of course. I love the way London-based Childnet International put it recently: "Digital citizenship isn’t just about recognising and dealing with online hazards. It's about ... using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same" (see this item) - an important focus for parenting and schooling going forward along the lines of "an ounce of prevention," "a stitch in time," etc., etc.... Speaking of which, virtual world safety expert Izzy Neis recently blogged about how a kids' world itself will be used to teach civility. She wrote that Dizzywood.com for kids 8-12 was "selected by the YMCA of San Francisco to enhance the youth program’s technology curriculum ... to reinforce its program emphasis on activities that promote values such as caring, honesty, respect and responsibility."

2 virtual worlds: NECC and Second Life!

Last week I went to my first NECC, the giant National Educational Computing Conference, this year in sticky, toasty San Antonio. We heard at the keynote (appropriately given by James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds) that some 18,000, mostly tech educators, were there. I was there to speak on a panel about online safety presented by the California Technology Assistance Project, which had Larry Magid and me speak about our book, MySpace Unraveled, a couple of years ago (more about CTAP in a moment) and to steep myself in tech education for a few days.

NECC was both inspiring and overwhelming. But overwhelming was good because, instead of trying to figure out what on earth to sample of the hundreds of workshops and presentations, I decided to go deep. I went to everything I could find about virtual worlds Second Life and Teen Second Life (besides my online-safety meetings). I'd long wanted to learn more about SL and virtual worlds in general, and what better way?

Which takes me to the inspiring part: what tech educators are doing in Teen Second Life (parents, you've got to see this stuff!). I attended presentations by two rockstars of the ed tech world....

Peggy Sheehy of Suffern Middle School in the New York area and creator of Ramapo Islands, I believe the very first real-life school in Teen SL (here's a video intro to what's happening at Ramapo, including the students' views, in the blog of another genius tech educator and Second Life resident, Kevin Jarrett), and if you prefer text to video, here's a transcript in Sheehy's blog of a mock trial based on Of Mice and Men staged by Suffern students (or rather their avatars) in Teen Second Life. Ramapo is now six islands in Teen SL, used by 1,000 students and 35 teachers.

Westley Field from Sydney, Australia, founder of the very international Skoolaborate.com and Skoolaborate Island in Teen SL (to see what's going on there, check out the first video on this page). So far this new project has 10 schools in 4 countries collaborating.

Just a few positives I witnessed and heard about in my NECC brushes with education in Second Life (watch this space for more on all this): a girl who never participated in class blossoming in virtual-world classes and then later in real life; the same for a boy whose mother wrote a profound thank you note to his teacher; students in multiple countries learning what species are endangered in others and together creating virtual spaces for them with the kind of environments in which they can thrive; students thinking critically together about body image and developing more healthy views of said by creating different avatars representing their evolving views; an entire class reading all of Of Mice and Men, not just the Cliff Notes, so they could play judges, DAs, prosecutors, witnesses, court reporters, jury members, etc. in the mock trial; students who don't want to miss any of it logging in from home when they're sick.

The amazing CTAP

I'm referring specifically to Region IV of a statewide project to help California's educators integrate technology into learning but also deal with students' extracurricular use of tech! I definitely have a bias because, through my friend, ed-tech eyes 'n' ears, and CTAP staffer Anne Bubnic, I have learned a great deal about both technology and education! You'll see at a glance on this CTAP4 page how much they're doing for California educators just in the area of cyber safety, which CTAP intelligently defines as "the safe and responsible use of the Internet and all information and communication technology devices, including mobile phones, digital cameras, and webcams."

This one region of a state project has a huge sphere of influence. Its funding is for assisting California schools, but the Web has a way of ignoring borders and the Web-wide, worldwide resources Anne has pulled together in Region 4's site are valuable to educators at least nationwide. In addition to the site it continuously updates, CTAP also trains teachers, administrators, school safety people, etc. in person and via videoconferencing. Obviously this second part of its work isn't as visible to all, so I'm going to zoom in on that training in a feature very soon.

Why all this about tech education in NetFamilyNews? Parents' certainly aren't the only shoulders on which society places responsibility for young people's constructive use of technology! Most of the negative stuff involving youth on the social Web is not criminal, so law enforcement (where people so often turn) usually can't help. Very often, then, the focus shifts to school policy and discipline. Yet, a lot of the imposter profiles, defaming blog posts, and general online or phone harassment that disrupts learning at school originates at home or somewhere else off school grounds. So it can really help parents to know what teachers and administrators are dealing with where student behavior's concerned, so the two parties can collaborate - with each other as well as the student(s) involved, hopefully - in solving tech-related problems that come up (see also "Why schools, parents need to fight cyberbullying together"). Problems involving the participatory Web require participatory solutions!

Related links

Peggy Sheehy's Suffern Middle School in Second Life

Westley Field's Skoolaborate

Kevin Jarrett's The Story of My Second Life

The official California Technology Assistance Project Web site's page about all the CTAP regions and their projects and Region 4's specifically (I'd like to know what other states have along the lines of CTAP - email me, people! - via anne@netfamilynews.org).

Real charity in virtual world

The virtual world of Second Life has a population of about 7 million (one-third Americans), and the populace is about to be exposed to a discussion about philanthropy. The MacArthur Foundation has given the Center on Public Diplomacy of the University of Southern California $550,000 to stage events in Second Life, including discussions of how foundations can address issues like migration and education,” the New York Times reports. Nonprofit organizations are setting up shop in Second Life and staging fund-raising events. The American Cancer Society has “raised real money with virtual walkathons,” according to the Times – a few hundred avatars walked and raised $5,000 in 2005, and $82,000 has already been raised for this year’s walkathon, which hasn’t even started yet. I think there should be a similar discussion in Teen Second Life, where there would be an equally strong response, and wonder if YouthNoise.com has thought of this.

Virtual money to real income

If people doubted – or never thought about - the real-world value of virtual economies (their children probably didn’t), the BBC has challenged any skepticism. “The possibility of making real money from virtual creations is the subject of the latest episode of the BBC show The Money Programme,” CNET reports. The show, which aired last Friday and was broadcast on both regular and virtual TV (the latter in the virtual world Second Life), explored the various ways real money is made in online worlds such as Lord of the Rings Online and Second Life, where “$600,000 changes hands every day,” according to CNET. “Some people, for example, hold down virtual jobs on the site while others sell unique clothing styles [for avatars in these worlds].” Others buy and sell artifacts (such as weapons in World of Warcraft) and advertising. “One Second Life virtual-real-estate agent recently claimed to have become the game's first real-life millionaire.”

Child-porn trading alleged in Second Life

If anybody needed confirmation that the online virtual world Second Life is not for kids, they got it this week. Law enforcement in Halle, Germany, is looking for Second Life players “who are reportedly buying sex with other players posing as children, as well as offering child pornography for sale,” The Guardian reports. A German investigative reporter who’s a member of Second Life told The Guardian “he had been ‘shocked to see’ the virtual child pornography meetings to which he was invited for 500 Linden dollars - around £1.50 [$2.99]. He said the same group of people subsequently put him in touch with traders in real child pornography.” Second Life’s parent, Linden Lab, in San Francisco, is working with police to find the offending players. Virtual child pornography is not a crime in the US, but in Germany it’s a crime “punishable by up to five years in prison,” The Guardian adds. Here’s the BBC’s coverage. According to just-released comScore research, 16% of Second Life users are German, making Germany “the largest country of origin in the ‘game’" of some 16 million players (followed by the US), The Register reports.