Kids Connect

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Project description

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Check out our new Kidz Connect blog (yes, that's "Kidz" with a "z" now) - it's been re-branded and updated with our current plans. The following represents archived information about our first pilot project between New York and Amsterdam. For current projects, check the Kidz Connect blog.

Information on the pilot project between New York & Amsterdam in summer 2006:

Kids Connect is a program that connects young people in different countries via media art, performance, and creative collaboration within virtual worlds such as Second Life. We introduce students to theatrical and digital methods, building a solid foundation of audio, visual and programming knowledge through which they can tell stories about their lives. In our pilot program in summer 2006, our New York students connected and created with students in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, via video streaming and in Second Life, the online virtual world. Guided by artists and educators from theatre and digital arts, they learned skills like VJ-ing, Playback Theatre, digital storytelling, and 3D modeling. In Second Life, they met and collaborated to build a hybrid virtual city combining aspects of both New York and Amsterdam. Within that common space, they created a performance that occurred both live and online simultaneously. We are currently running a Kidz Connect program connecting students in Tampa, Florida, and Amsterdam, Netherlands (summer 2008). We've also rebranded and you can now find our main site at kidzconnect.org

Josephine Dorado (ZoomLab, NY), Dan Winckler (IDMI, NY), Saar van Kouswijk (Waag Society, Amsterdam), Evelyn Raat, Tanja den Broeder, and Jeroen Frans (Imagine IC, Amsterdam) collaboratively directed the workshops through the auspices of these participating organizations:

Schedule

Overview

Phase 1: workshops and activities

  • Theater games, sound and movement experimentation, and improvisational exercises, providing a foundation for creative play between the students
  • Guest teacher Hannah Fox and her cast from Big Apple Playback Theatre taught the Playback technique, in which the performers ask the audience for real stories from their lives and then "play back" those stories on stage
  • Rob Neill, managing director of the New York Neo-Futurists, taught the the Neo-Futurist technique: "always performing from a perspective of absolute honesty...as ourselves on stage, speaking directly from our personal experiences."
  • The theme of New York <> Nieuw Amsterdam was explored and students researched their city's Dutch history on the Internet
  • Digital storytelling through still and moving images: students learned how to shoot digital photos and video and edit them in Apple iMovie to tell stories
  • Physics and perception of sound, and effective microphone use and recording with audio recording expert Karl Wenninger
  • Collaborative visual performance: multi-user audio/visual jams via the Internet, taught by visualist/programmer Eric Redlinger
  • VJ-U: how to be a VJ! In which we made a music video and a welcome video showing who we are for the Amsterdam students, taught by master VJ Benton C. Bainbridge
  • Movement and Synthesis: dance improvisation and audio/visual performance with dancer/visualist Marlon Barrios-Solano
  • Second Life: navigation, identity and communication in online virtual worlds, building and texturing 3D models, and scripting, taught by Second Life guest teachers Katie Farrell and Sean Farrell
  • Collaborative building of the Kids Connect island in Second Life via multi-user online authoring (wikis)
  • Simultaneous theatrical performance in real life and Second Life, enabling cultural exchange with Amsterdam students through Playback Theatre


Phase 2: Kids Connect - summer 08

  • We're debriefing and planning the next Kids Connect program.

Kids Connect Tampa Bay, will engage youth in Tampa, FL, and Amsterdam, Netherlands, to explore issues such as identity politics and cultural differences via collaborative creations. This learning environment will combine digital storytelling and performing arts techniques within the virtual world Teen Second Life. As participants master this media and discover new forms of expression, they will learn about the process of cross-cultural teamwork and expand their grasp of global issues. This project will culminate in a live multidisciplinary, multimedia networked performance occurring simultaneously in both cities and online in Teen Second Life.

Go to the Kidz Connect '08 blog.

Partners:

Our work: students' stories

Photos
Videos
  • New Amsterdam Jam - a music video composed of pieces of the VJ performance the NY students did together.
  • Welkom - a video the NY students made to welcome their Dutch counterparts to the Kids Connect island. All the students collaborated in the making of this, each with a role (director, shooter, mixer, ...) like in a TV production studio.
Student pages

This is a place for our students to write, reflect, and share ideas with one another.

link to our movies

Our Work: Teachers' Stories

Teachers, please share your thoughts on what we've learned from each other and the direction you would like to see Kids Connect programs move in.

These summary pages are for quick 'nutshell' info.

Second Life:

Mystified by this "Second Life"? Here's what we think it is.

Second Life Learning Outcomes, Lesson Plans, etc.

Second Life Resources

LessonPlans

Special thanks to our teacher Sean Farrell for the following lesson plans and build list!

SL learning outcomes and lesson plans: Second Life related learning outcomes, lesson descriptions, lesson plans

SL build list: a list to identify and track a list of virtual objects and scripts which would be useful to develop, build, or otherwise acquire for the kids connect island

Plans and Ideas for building on the Kids Connect island

Build plans for the Kids Connect island: a place to brainstorm and plan what we want on the Kids Connect Island.

Activity and lesson planning: Kids Connect Second Life Activities

List of useful objects to prepare: Second Life Build List

Full proposal files

For a detailed picture of what a Kids Connect workshop is, read these proposal files, which describe our objectives, lesson plans, and learning outcomes.

Presentations and write-ups about Kids Connect

Presentation files

Full presentation: Note:
You will need all the files to run the PowerPoint presentation. The movies are linked, so place them in the same folder as the PowerPoint file.
The files have been made "pc-friendly" as well (movies are mpegs and fonts are pc-compatible) (works on mac too).

Other useful documents

Contact info

New York

  • Josephine Dorado

director, Zoomlab; co-director, Kids Connect
email: josephine@zoomlab.org
skype: danceinthesky
+1.646.228.9100

  • Dan Winckler

co-director, Kids Connect
email: dan@danwinckler.com
skype: plasticpool
+1.917.586.5213

  • Carl Skelton

director, Integrated Digital Media Institute
email: cskelton@poly.edu
skype: ultratopia
+1.718.260.4018

  • Beverly Johnson

executive director, The Promise Fund's Center for Youth in Engineering and Science
email: bjohnson@poly.edu
718-637-5944

Amsterdam

  • Henk van Zeijts

Program Manager Creative Learning
Waag Society
email: henkz@waag.org
T 020 - 557 98 98
F 020 - 557 98 80

  • Evelyn Raat

Imagine Identity and Culture
email: evelyn@imagineic.nl
T 020 489 4866

Links

Elsewhere on this wiki

Organizations

Waag Society website
Waag Society description
Waag Society portfolio
Polytechnic University
Integrated Digital Media Institute of Polytechnic University
Promise Fund's Center for Youth in Engineering and Science (YES)
Eyebeam
Imagine IC

New York | Nieuw Amsterdam

Maps:

Map of early New York - click for larger image
Map of early New York - click for larger image

Map of current New York with old map superimposed on it
Map of current New York with old map superimposed on it


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