Kids have imagination, Let them loose.

Imagination, oh how I miss thee

Its not something you notice is missing until its gone, and when its gone you can't remember what it was that is now missing.

Over the past 2 years I have been blessed working in a pioneering industry in Virtual Worlds and no where grasps it as close as Education, Learning and Simulation.

But I want to talk about the meetings I have with the kids (young adults, youths) call them what you will but they are so much better at my job than I could ever dream to be.

2 years ago Second Places started construction upon CANVAS (Children's art and the national arena of Scotland). A place where kids art from all over Scotland could be showcased. We came up with the concept design, a replica of the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. Not an exact replica but the similar idea, large stair case, wings off a central area, you know the type, the normal Victorian build of an art gallery or museum.

We were excited by our design, I was very much looking forward to the build. However in a workshop with the kids from Auchterarder Community School it became very clear that I was OLD.

Here was a world (virtual) where gravity was not a problem, where it never rains and the limits of this rather sad world we live in can be simply ignored. And I came to a bunch of kids to say, "We should have it like buildings that already exist!".

Luckily the Teachers knew better and let the kids come up with the design. A massive ream of paper with kids on both sides just doodling. Their designs were just amazing, it really put me and my team to shame.

"There is no gravity, so why not build up the way?", "Does it need a roof?", "Why walk when you could use a turbo lift?". The questions just came from innocence and enthusiasm.

The final design of CANVAS shows 32 art pods floating the sky, each containing 30 unique pieces of art.

CANVAS is now live and kicking and last week at another consultation with kids every pupil doing Art and Design knew about CANVAS and what it could do.

Last week I had 8 Consultations with kids from all over a region in Scotland. What an experience! We had some groups who were shy, glazed looks with not a scooby what I was talking about, while we had others who could see virtual worlds as their way to try new skills, find skills they didn't even know existed.

It was my role to get them involved from this early stage.

Their new virtual world would be based upon the ideas from these kids. I'm currently writing up the consultation now, but we had kids wanting to run for mayor, run as police commissioner, setup up community groups, help create content, stream their band into their own club. Allow them to hang out and compare stuff with other kids from all over the region.

In total I spoke to over 40 kids about virtual worlds and what was possible and the majority just embraced it like ducks to water. I left one group sorting out roles to create a shoe making business.

I stressed to them that making something was only a very small part of the experience. I used my own company to explain. "I have the best product in the world, its quite simply light years ahead, however I have no marketing skills, I have no sales skills and I have no interpersonal skills, so my idea will fail unless I find people who have these skills to help me!".

The kids just loved that! Here was a way for a group of people to work together, find what they are good at and use it.

Another group was more into the politics of the world. Everyone was told that there was always "GOD" in the virtual world, the person who can over ride government (lets be honest the kids also had some ideas that had to be closed down quickly), but they wanted a recall process for the mayor of the world (who would be a kid) we even had a debate about the voting system.

And there was real enthusiasm, you could see them getting passionate about something that would require hens teeth in the real world. Their imagination just ran riot and it got them learning so much more than listening to me preach to them.

Reading my notes we covered politics, economics, law and order, citizenship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement I bet we spoke about "boring" stuff in an exciting and engaging way in that 1 hour slot than most of these kids had spoken about in their past year.

Kids are great, lets get them using virtual worlds, let them enjoy using it with as much freedom as we can give them. Let them learn skills they didn't even know they were learning.

Second Places can help you with consultation as well as create your very own Virtual World. Secure and safe and as locked down as you "GOD" see fit!

Why we don't do grids or Hyperlinking

Its not a choice - Its a demand

The internet is only over a couple of decades old. So people in the top jobs likely started their careers without the use of wiki, IMing and email. So its understandable their reluctance to embrace even newer technologies like virtual worlds.

And in Education they have even greater concerns. The anonymity of the internet brings in even more problems than the solution the technology gives.

When Second Places started over 2 years ago we worked in Second Life, and had 5 or so schools operating in the teen grid. It wasn't easy to get schools to use Second Life in the first place. Kids could not use their own names, teachers had to jump through hoops to gain access and all in all it was a rather terrible space.

But it wasn't the technical problems that stopped most schools. It was the legal problems. These are actually comments made to me when promoting a virtual world to education:-

• We need the kids to have their own name so we can see what is happening
• We are liable if the kids use the computers to communicate with each other. Like organizing a bullying event through a communication tool like IM or Virtual World.
• There is no way to stop them typing in swear words
• We will never allow them to speak (voice or text) to anyone anywhere, anytime who is not approved by the school to be talking to kids.
• We can't have kids parents in world with the ability to talk to other kids (see above)
  
• We need a record of every word ever said to anyone
• They can not change their avatar
• They should only be able to use avatars, clothes approved by the school

The list was endless. I'm sure there is a world somewhere that kids are trusted, but more importantly the kids don't need trusting and adults see kids as innocents and would never dream doing anything to child that shouldn't be done.

However we don't live in that world. Kids will be kids, and as a parent, I would expect the school to make sure that when i hand my son over they will do EVERYTHING to make sure he's safe physically as well as emotionally.

I always pointed out that I could never see a child log into a virtual world to meet his friend (he is likely sitting beside in class) to arrange a bullying event. However I understood the problem.

Schools have a responsibility and with this anything new that could weaken their way of protecting the child was looked upon as a danger.

We understood this but as Second Life was not ours, there was nothing we could do.

Again we were saved by OpenSim.

We could answer their questions all in the affirmative.

Kids could use their own names, in fact with OpenSim we could have the kids logging in with the same username and password as they used for other in school systems. Wasn't easy for some, shibboleth became a dirty word for us here in Second Places, but it did mean a much easier access for the school.

Schools could turn off and on text and audio chat through a web interface. So if there was a teacher present in world, they could flip a switch and kids could verbally or text chat.

This allowed kids to show their parents their work and the school not worried that the parent could speak to anyone (you don't know if wee Jimmys dad is a good guy or not I guess).

We had a swear word filter, even better it was dynamic, so as a "new" word came out the school could just type it into a web page and that word would be displayed as hashes and an alarm would be sent to the school to say "Jimmy X said XYZ @ 10:52 location 123,142,30". No one around him would hear the word.

Every chat, verbal or text could be recorded and stored.

We modified the client so the kids client would not allow them to "take off" clothing, or upload images or create any clothes. So we locked down the world, but if they school wanted the kids to build and make stuff, they had access (in school only) to the normal client that did everything normally, but only used when a teacher was present.


It was done, all the worry from Schools was answered. It wasn't easy and we spent a lot of time on it. But it was a locked down, secure and customizable world that schools could be happy in the knowledge their children were as safe as possible, even safer than real world.


So the question, why we don't do grid or hyperlinking? Its all said above. For education in the UK (and I assume everywhere else) it has to be locked down, and that means cut off from the rest of the world.

But alas that is a heck of a shame. We want content to be shared. Its expensive to create content for virtual worlds and not share it (even charge back for it).

So we created the content grid, a web based virtual world island market when schools could create islands and upload them to marketplace. Sell or give them away to other schools.

These islands could be anything, Looking at the market place now we have trenches of world war 1 for GCSE English Lit., we have a working hydro dam, a replica of a radio telescope and much more, walking through a mayan temple, an art gallery, a cat walk.

Any school signed up to The Content Grid can access and upload the market place. So you can still share content, approve it before your kids can see it. And its still all locked down tight.