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Monday 29th December 2008 8:25 am

Nafiza Akter: Virtual Video Projects

A graduate of Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program reflects on her work on their virtual video projects. Nafiza’s post is part of a series of posts from digital media’s young content creators.

The last couple of years with Global Kids are hard to describe in a few words, especially the work I’ve done around digital media. November 2006, the first Virtual Video Project program began. The mission of the program was to produce a short machinima, which is a term used to describe a film produced in a virtual platform, about a global issue. Most of us, if not all, went into the program without any prior knowledge of Second Life, which was the Virtual World we filmed on.

The first year, we started off with making Public Service Announcements in smaller groups. My group worked on depicting how technology can play a positive role in helping to reduce obesity. There is generally a negative outlook on technology, and it is often deemed a contributor to obesity. However, we realized that some schools were imputing Dance Dance Revolution pads in schools to engage students and motivate them to exercise. This seemed like an interesting way to use technology to help reduce obesity. Doing the PSA on the subject of obesity was important to us not only because there were so many negative implications about technology contributing to obesity, but also because child obesity has risen exponentially in America and it can be deadly to our society as a whole.

Then we went on to making a short movie. The hardest part of this was coming to a consensus on one topic. One of the issues most Global Kids teens have is deciding on one topic to work on because it always feels as though every issue is so crucial. However, after a long debate between Global Warming and Child Soldiers, we decided that child soldiers was the topic we’d most like to work on. After choosing the general topic, we had to go on to specifying it, and researching it-which we did. We worked on making our movie centered on the use of child soldiers specifically in the Northern Ugandan region.

After narrowing down the region, we had to do a lot of research. We had help from experts, but I also had the opportunity to speak with Ishmael Beah when he came to speak about his book, A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. It was truly an amazing experience hearing him speak because the idea of child soldiers felt so surreal before his inspirational words brought it to life. It also fueled us to work harder to produce the film because we now personally knew someone who had faced such a tragedy.

I can sit here and try to type up all the words that describe how it felt to finish the film and present it, but it’d just take too long. There was a certain degree of accomplishment and anxiety associated with putting the film out there; we were all making a machinima for the first time of our lives and we knew that there have been several machinima that have come before it that set the standard high-so we were prepared for much criticism. At the same time, we knew the idea behind the film was strong and it was indubitably an issue that was worth exposing. It was nice knowing that we took some initiative to do something to spread awareness on the use of child soldiers. Plus, I got to travel to Chicago for the Second Life Community Convention to speak on what we produced. It was a fantastic experience because we got to share our insights with an audience of experts on Second Life. Plus, even though we didn’t have a audience of over a thousand people, it still felt as if by describing our experiences and motivations to produce the film, we were also spreading awareness on the film.

So after loving the Virtual Video Project, I decided that I’d continue with Global Kids with the summer and became an Intern/Mentor for the Convention on the Rights of the Child Summer Camp that Global Kids ran in collaboration with UNICEF. The objective of this program was to help teens from around the United States and the world produce a minute long film about one children’s right identified in the CRC. It was an interesting experience because I took on more of an individual role. Plus, I got to experience a bit of what the Global Kids staff goes through in order to help us [teens] produce and finalize our projects. It was an interesting perspective to work with teens entirely online to produce a film they envisioned. It is amazing to think of how much we were able to accomplish just through the internet, and above all the other experiences I’ve had with Global Kids this one most significantly helped me improve my online communications skills.

Afterwards, I continued to go on to do my second year with the Virtual Video Project, and we created a movie called “Race to Equality” on the topic of unequal distribution of education in the United States, Brazil, and Tibet. Since I was the only returning student to the program I had a strange role sometimes because I’d been one of the participants of the program but I’d also be one of the people everyone else would bring questions to. While in the Virtual Video Project, I was also participating in the Online Internship Global Kids runs on Teen Second Life. The interesting part about doing this was that I’ve run workshops in real life before, but this one incorporated me running them entirely online and by myself. It was definitely one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. The greatest highlight would be having the opportunity to stream Ishmael Beah’s speech onto the Teen Grid to have the teens hear his words. I loved that they had the opportunity to hear his story even when they all live in different parts of the world.

Although I’ve done more things with Global Kids, those are some of the highlights. I’ve learned so much through Global Kids, and not just about filming and editing-but also about the world and people around me.

Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected

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