Project Overview: DAA TeenSL Media Center

Dubai American Academy has grown phenomenally since its inception in 1997, mirroring the growth of the emirate of Dubai. The original campus was a 10 room villa in Umm Suqqiem and housed between 40 and 60 students during its 2 years of operation. During the summer of 2000, the school moved to its current campus of 20 acres in Al Barsha, next to Mall of the Emirates. We now have a pre-K to grade 12 student body of over 1700 students representing 78 different nationalities. Most of us were not here at the beginning. We have the opportunity to recapture some of our history by rebuilding the original campus in Teen Second Life and using it in new ways.

The purposes of our pilot project are:

• For students and teachers to develop their understanding of emerging digital media
• To promote interactivity, collaboration and global connectedness among students and teachers
• Identify innovative ways to use Second Life as pedagogical tool to meet the existing Digital Media Studies curriculum
• To establish ourselves in the TSL and SL educational communities
• To document the educational value of using Second Life as a digital media tool in and out of the classroom
• To evaluate and report on SL's ease of use for students and teachers new to the medium
• To explore network issues and solutions
• To identify solutions to problems that will inevitably arise during a pilot program
• To explore alternative background check processes with Linden Lab that are feasible for international teachers and maintain the integrity of the teen grid.

The goal of Digital Media Studies students is to develop functionality in the 3D virtual environment of Teen Second Life and through their interactions and work, demonstrate an understanding of the unique qualities of this new medium. They will:

1. Learn to interact, move around and use their inventories


2. Gain basic building skills through a simple collaborative exercise


3. Analyze existing builds and ways in which the medium is currently being exploited.


4. Recreate the original DAA villa campus


5. Develop the villa as a virtual media center on TeenSL. IT related resources created by HS students will be available to facilitate tech-integration and the creation of media artifacts.
   
6. Exhibit a variety of student-created media from KG to grade 12.


7. Have a special focus on IB (International Baccalaureate) Art students' portfolios.


8. Work with individual IB Art students to custom design a studio in which to display their portfolio work.


9. Develop a collaborative build that utilizes the unique qualities if the 3D medium.


10. Record virtual world experiences in the blog as well as hand in assignments and share resources through the Teen SL Moodle course

Building the villa will be a collaborative effort and, with the exception of scripting, be entirely done by students. The orginal villa had 10 rooms, a garden and a separate building used as an indoor gymansium, cafeteria and auditorium. The villa does need to have a similar general appearance to the original real life villa. However, the building may need to be larger in order to house the IB student studios along with the general DAA community. Some artistic license will be required!

We expect to have at least one teacher with an avatar on the teen grid by the first of April, 2007. Linden Lab's stringent background check covering the last ten years of residence has been a significant hurdle to starting up. Our teaching community is typical of all overseas American international schools. We are highly mobile international teachers who have lived in multiple developing countries over the last ten years. Most of us move to a new country every three to six years so the Ascertain fee becomes a significant, recurring expense to the school.

Background checks with Ascertain cost us approximately $580 USD (Alpine), $880 USD (Myracles), and $295 USD (Ryuu). We are actively pursuing a reasonable alternative procedure with Claudia Linden that will allow overseas American, UK and other international schools to participate in Second Life.

See you in-world soon!

Alpine