Teen Second Life

Teen Second Life is a version of Second Life reserved for teenagers, running on the so-called "Teen Grid." It was officially opened to the public on February 14, 2005 for people aged 13–17 to play Second Life, without entering false information to participate in Second Life (reserved for people aged 18 and over). On January 1, 2006, Teen Second Life's operating hours were increased to 24 hours a day, whereas it was previously open only from noon to 10 pm Pacific Time.

Differences

Second Life and the Teen Second Life are different in several ways:

Access

Registering in Teen Second Life is free for the first Basic account. Currently, to register for Teen Second Life you are required to provide identity verification via either a North American SMS enabled phone or a Paypal account.

Many users are experiencing problems with registration with PayPal, since the Second Life link appears to fail to bring users back to the Second Life website and confirm the PayPal billing agreement. For more information see the pJIRA (Bug Tracker) article: WEB-734 The only way to resolve the issue is to create a support ticket at Second Life's Support Portal.

Age

• Teen Second Life users are transferred to Second Life once they turn 18, taking all content and private islands with them.
• Underage users found to be violating the Terms of Service by accessing Second Life may either be transferred to Teen Second Life or be restricted from accessing either area entirely. In the case of transfer, all inventory is erased in an effort to prevent Mature content being transferred to Teen Second Life.
• Overage users found to be violating the Terms of Service by accessing Teen Second Life face banning from all areas of Second Life (website, TSL and SL)
• Open Registration was implemented, but quickly removed for Teen Second Life, to increase security against users over age 18 from entering Teen Second Life.
• Adults are allowed on Teen Second Life on a limited basis, provided they pass a criminal background check. Up to this point, these adults, called approved adults, have all been educators or non-profits. They are required to stay in adult owned islands and may not join teen created groups, nor can they under any circumstances visit the mainland of Teen Second Life. See more in the Educators Working with Teens section of this page.

Demographics

• Teen Second Life, unlike Second Life, is comprised primarily of residents from the United States and Canada, due in part to restrictions intended to deter adult registration.
• The average Teen Second Life resident is male and 16 years old.
• Teen Second Life residents invest less money, or Linden Dollars, on land than their Second Life counterparts.
• The average Teen Second Life resident spends more time inworld than the average Second Life resident by roughly 25%. Teen Second Life concurrency tends to be affected significantly by the school calendar.
• Teen Second Life is highly appreciated by adults for its high safety standards and its education areas.

Land

• Teen Second Life is significantly smaller in the size of its userbase, the amount of land and concurrent Resident population at any given time.
• The Teen Grid is a fraction of the size of the Adult Grid , and has significantly fewer Resident-owned estates. There are more "project" sims than Mainland and private estate sims combined. ^[4]

As of 2008-02-12, the Teen Grid had 63 Mainland regions, 12 resident-owned estates, and 80 educational/project estates.

Content

• The Teen Community Standards prohibit mature content, including strong language, strong graphic violence and nudity.^[5]
• As well as social spaces, education groups are exploring the potential of Teen Second Life as a learning space. See section below.
• Teen Second Life has many 'military' groups, organized to stage various wars in the Teen Grid's few combat sims. Members of these groups comprise a significant portion of the overall population.

Economy

• Teen Second Life has somewhat different economy compared to Second Life. Land prices and in-world object prices are known to be different, as the average income for the people that play these grids differs.
• LindeX (The Linden Lab endorsed trading service), however, takes from the same pool of Linden Dollars (L$) for both Second Life and Teen Second Life.
• Teen Second Life economy revolves around avatars, accessories, weapons, armies, scripts, and land barons (Residents who squat land in order to resell it, usually at an inflated price). The majority of Teen Second Life's residents are basic accounts without weekly stipends, so the L$ has slightly, nearly significant, more value on Teen Second Life than on Second Life, but due to lesser demand on content, content can be bought for significantly less than on Second Life (Comparing sources such as Second Life economy and Teen Second Life economy + Content). For example, a "Second Life-quality" car with similar features can cost L$400 (400 Linden Dollars) on Teen Second Life, while it may cost up to L$10,000 (10,000 Linden Dollars, or 10k) on Second Life.

Performance

Teen Second Life shares asset server space with Second Life, and both are equally affected by unusually heavy concurrency or database issues.

Teen Second Life Educational Projects

Linden Lab allows educators to enter Teen Second Life to set up projects on islands they buy or by participating in Campus:TSL, a Linden Lab run program that provides free land to middle school and secondary educators on a short term basis.

The educational projects in Teen Second Life fall into two categories; those that are accessible to all residents of Teen Second Life (public projects), and those accessible to teens associated with a particular project in 'real life' (private projects). These private projects are most often inaccessible to Teen Second Life residents.

Public Projects

• Global Kids Island - a place for teen residents to learn about important social and world issues. It was created and is run by Global Kids, a non-profit organization based in New York City dedicated to developing youth to become global citizens and community leaders. Global Kids was the first educational organization to enter Teen Second Life, opening an island in March 2006 when it hosted a digital media essay contest, created the SL version of the Save Darfur charity wristband campaign, and brought in a real world photo exhibit from students it worked with in Brooklyn, NY. In the summer of 2006, it held Camp GK, a four week intensive program where Teen Second Life residents engaged in workshops on foreign policy and human rights issues. In the Fall of 2006, it partnered with UNICEF to host the World Fit For Children Festival, and invited media scholar Henry Jenkins to give a lecture/dance party where he spoke about media and learning. In the academic year of 2006, a real world machinima program, the Virtual Video Project, and a real-world gaming program, Playing 4 Keeps, both using TSL, were launched in New York City schools as after school programs. These projects were Global Kids' first uses of Teen Second Life with students in a face to face educational setting.
• Eye4YouAlliance - a partnership with the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and the Alliance Library System to give opportunities to teens to create and collaborate through library services offered in Second Life. *Note-this blog moved from here
• British Council Isle - the idea behind this project is to create a 3D virtual self-access center aimed principally at learners of English, and also to offer an engaging inter-cultural space for English language learners and native speaking teens to meet. Its principle aim is not to teach English, but to encourage globally-based language learners and existing Teen Second Life residents to come to the island to practice English. The project, not yet public as of July 2007, will be providing a wide range of materials for students as well as games, quests, and treasure hunts based on linguistic clues. In short, the British Council Isle will be both an iconic virtual representation of Great Britain, and a rich setting in which learners of English can further their learning of the language and culture of the UK as well as raising awareness of visitors to the work and opportunities provided by the British Council.
• New Hope Fellowship - a non-denominational online church that originated in Teen Second Life, making it the only initiative started in the virtual world itself. It was made to grow and connect the Christian community as well as to reach out to teens who may use Teen Second Life as an escape from their real world problems. Originally it was known as GLOBAL Ministries, but was changed so to prevent confusion between itself and the Global Kids organization. Currently plans are being made to purchase a virtual private island.

Private Projects

• UK Open University's 'Schome' project - one of a limited number of educational explorations. Their first three month pilot in Spring 2007 found that there was strong evidence that the students who had engaged within the closed 'Schome Park' island enhanced their knowledge age skills, and the environment offered affordances that other media lack.^[6] The original 'SchomePark' pilot island has been re-landscaped and redesigned in the light of what was learnt and was relaunched in June 2007 as 'SPii'.
• EdBoost - a Campus TSL project where students script the contents of the island and adults teach computer programming.
• Kids Connect Island - a series of workshops for young people in multiple locations, teaching them to connect and work together via performance, storytelling and collaboration by both theatrical and digital means. In the pilot program in summer 2006, participants connected and created with other students in New York and Amsterdam via video streaming and on Kids Connect Island in the Teen Second Life. Guided by artists and educators from theater and new media, they learned skills like VJ-ing, Playback Theatre, digital storytelling, and 3D modelling. In teen SL, they met and collaborated to build a hybrid city combining aspects of both New York and Amsterdam. Within that common space, they created a performance that occurred both live and online simultaneously.
• Pacific Rim Exchange (PacRim X) - a collaborative project between two school districts, one in California, and one in Japan. The project is private and only open to exchange students from the two school districts, and their teachers.
• Suffern Middle School - a virtual presence for education at Suffern Middle School, Suffern, NY.
• Ohio University VITAL Lab Second Life projects A number of Second Life projects for high schools and middle schools.
• Project Cabrillo - a project whose goal is twofold: use SL to display 8th grade Digital Art students' work from Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Bryce 3D as well as Second Life constructions. It will also use SL to explore the virtual environment with a focus on social interaction and presentation of the self in relation to real world situations.
• Global Citizenship in a Virtual World - a project in Virginia to bring middle schoolers into Second Life to create exhibits and interact with other teens from around the world about pressing global issues.
• Virtual World Campus - provides a way for educators with lower budgets to use Teen Second Life for education. VWC helps avoid the steep learning curve and high minimum costs of having one's own private island.
• Skoolaborate Islands - a global virtual learning space in the Teen Grid in Second Life that is only accessible via invitation. It was initiated in 2007 by Westley Field at MLC School Sydney. To date, 22 schools/organizations from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Chile, Portugal, the UK and the USA are participants. Teens are the primary builders of the island, although teens and teachers alike run and host the learning experience.

See also

• Second Life

External links

• Teen Second Life: A Virtual World for Teens – Official website

References