Second Life Video Made in Italy Stirs Controversy

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Second Life Video Made in Italy Stirs Controversy - Chronicle.com

A video made in Second Life, the virtual world, by a consortium of Italian universities has unleashed a heated debate on a mailing list for educators [aVataR@School Project]. Some said the video, which may be introduced into a secondary-school curriculum to promote conflict resolution among teenagers, was racist and promoted negative stereotypes of Muslims and Turks. Others defended it, arguing that the main message was about bullying.

The video, in its pilot phase, features a lonely boy, Martin, at a European school who is being blackmailed by a Turkish gang member named Ahmed. He demands that Martin regularly provide him with money and goods. Martin resorts to stealing things from his classmates.

The closing scene of the video shows Martin giving a stolen cellphone to an armed Ahmed, while the owner of the cellphone—another schoolboy—looks on from afar. “How can we resolve this situation?” the video asks….

It really makes me wonder about our teacher training program… and this is funded by the E.U.?

Sharkrunners Game

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Alex’s post Man v. Shark led me to Sharkrunners Game : Shark Week : Discovery Channel, which is particularly cool, as Alex mentions because it uses telemetry from real sharks that have been tagged with GPS.

Education Policy Blog: New Research: Test Score Progress Weaker and Advances in Narrowing Racial and

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Education Policy Blog: New Research: Test Score Progress Weaker and Advances in Narrowing Racial and Income-based Achievement Gaps Have Faded Since NCLB

As Congress reviews federal efforts to boost student performance, new research published in Educational Researcher (ER) reports that progress in raising test scores was stronger before No Child Left Behind was approved in 2002, compared with the four years following enactment of the law.

The AERA web site has a news brief and link to article.

Second Life and WoW ‘plagued by terrorists’

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Second Life and WoW ‘plagued by terrorists’

AUSSIE SECURITY experts claim that Second Life and online games such as World of Warcraft are being used to train terrorists.
According to the Australian newspaper a terror campaign has been waged in Second Life which has left a trail of virtual dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars’ damage.
Apparently there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life and they use the site for recruiting and training. This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army, which has been responsible for some computer-coded atomic bombings of stores on the site.
Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qa’ida, said terrorists are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they can’t practice in the real world.
Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.
So we can expect more terrorist attacks involving broadswords and Heathrow airport to be closed due to suicide dragons.

[Via Slashdot | Second Life & WoW Terrorist Training Camps? and thanks to Catspaw for giving me the heads up on this.

Check out the whole article Virtual terrorists in The Australian.

Now, I always did say that virtual reality and simulations are good learning environments that have applications in the real world, but I was not thinking of this. Personally, I think that this is silly. But then I think about A Rape in Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell (Published in: Village Voice, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 51, December 21, 1993) and I am reminded that we do have to consider the emotional impacts of actions online.

The Wind

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.