Global Kids’ Curriculum – now Extended!

Jeremy Kemp, of SimTeach and Sloodle fame, and Stephen Kemp, have taken the material of the Global Kids’ Curriculum and extended the notion, reformatting the text and images into various forms that improve their usability and use, as well as adding to the already high quality and quantity of notes available.

Global Kids

Global Kids(GK), Inc. created the contents of the Global Kids Curriculum (GKC). GK uses digital media – digital presentations, digital environments such as Second Life and the Teen Second Life Grid, and so on –  to deliver their messages and their programs to the youths and adults that are their targets. GK runs intensive leadership programs for youth, with the intent that kids become “successful students as well as global and community leaders.” The material for adults covers both professional development programs for teachers and educators involved in youth education – multimedia presentations delivered via Second Life – and professional development services, such as RezEd. They also run an innovative high school, and give technological assistance to other schools.

Jeremy Kemp

Jeremy Kemp began his work teaching online in 1999; currently he is an instructional designer at San José State University and a doctoral student, focusing on educational and social issues in immersive environments. The SimTeach Second Life Education wiki that Kemp runs contains a plethora of information for educators entering Second Life and using it as an educational tool. Sloodle is the combination of the  Moodle – a content management system (CMS) – and Second Life that Kemp has created.

Stephen Kemp is Jeremy Kemp’s father.

Global Kids’ Curriculum

The Global Kids’ Second Life Curriculum is a surprisingly comprehensive set of notes, intended to teach the reader what they need to know to use Second Life, as well as being useful for teaching literacy skills. It can be used as a set of handouts or used in its entirety to teach Second Life-specific skills to either students or educators.

The curriculum is composed of nine levels, within which there are modules and then individual lesson plans or “missions” – there are 163 missions.

To download copies of this curriculum, you will need to join RezEd.org and the curriculum group.

The curriculum is on offer for free to all qualified educational institutions, though Global Kids do request donations be made when the material is used, so that they can continue providing and extending their services.

The curriculum was developed by Global Kids Staff and co-produced with Cathy Arreguin.

Global Kids’ Curriculum / Extended

This link points to the Global Kids’ Curriculum / Extended (GKCx) web page, which contains links to the new forms of the  GKC – the new PDF document, the wiki, the Second Life textures, videos explaining the GKCx, and original word documents from Global Kids.

The PDF contains a package of all of the notes contained within a single document. Printed, it makes a handy physical reference. It is also useful as a digital entity, as the Kemps have added a set of bookmarks, a contents page and abstracts for each level, that enable the user to navigate the material easily.

The textures available in Second Life are images of each of the PDF pages from the large package. Paula Christopher (aka Downtown Bloch) has also made these textures available on the Teen Grid.

The wiki is for the most part a replication of the PDF document and is very close to completion.

GKCx  is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.

The GKCx is an easily navigable and highly useful set of resources that nicely extends the work done by Global Kids. It’s recommended that educators make use of the new formats.

Weekend Whimsy

1. こぶっちのお昼寝♪ Ⅲ

2. Second Life – Ska Underground Club

3. Global Kids launch International Justice Center in SL

Previous Posts