Eco Child’s Play

Even though I spend a lot of time championing the outdoors as the ultimate green play time, greening kids’ minds with environmental stewardship happens online daily.

From greening your electronics to green gaming and havens for the budding naturalist, there are plenty of online to offline bridges to walk if you put on the right hiking shoes.

I love kid-lit and fabulous tree tales like A Forest of Stories and The Giving Tree is still my favorite book of all time…but paper free, online media like Dizzywood’s virtual world of collaborative play prove eco-literacy can transpire on a screen too…In Web 2.0 live-chat, 3-D immersive, fun!

Last week at the massive Virtual Worlds Expo in L.A., Dizzywood’s virtual critters and cuties turned some heads learning that kids’ reforestation efforts online enabled 15,000 REAL trees to be planted off line, thanks to their eco-partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation! Created for preteens 8-12 and Privo  Safety Seal tested with accolades out the wazoo, Dizzywood is thankfully, NOT an anomaly…Check out these OTHER eco-positive picks that prove green media is not an oxymoron!

• » See also: 52 Outdoor Activities and Projects to Get Families Closer to Nature
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There are so many eco-friendly kids’ sites that are NOT greenwashing like the BarbieGirls bit, that I’ve decided to do a ‘green media mini-series’ for Eco-Child’s Play…including favorites like Zookazoo’s Earth Day Challenge and cute little water and power game which is indicative of the eco-consciousness in their whimsical virtual networking world…and newcomer Elf Island’s ‘Gaming for Good’ which launches into the mix soon.

More and more, virtual worlds are being used as eco-incubators and simulations for sustainability, so it makes sense to get to know the founders and creative minds behind some of these kids’ worlds to see how green messaging can be used as a motivator and informal learning tool.

Shaping Youth has been covering Dizzywood’s evolution long before the tree project’s inception way back on Earth Day, even before this post on seeding their green gazebo. I’ve been watching their blog, The Explorer’s Journal to see the content and creativity, and in fact, set up my daughter when they were in ‘beta testing’ mode to see how kids interacted. (offspring as guinea pig, I know…)

She’s an outdoor tween by nature, and tires easily online, but she really DID get a kick out of the reforestation (planting and nourishing a tree together) customizing her room décor, and chatting with other avatars to find out how to get one of the fish from the pond to follow her around like a pet.

She had so much fun, she agreed to explore inside each world with me to compare notes before each of my interviews in this ECP green series. (probably her way of snagging more media time outside of her limits) Here is my most recent post about Dizzywood which alludes to instilling self-confidence and a sense of belonging within their little hub of cooperative play…

Meanwhile, I’ll assume we all know it’s a given that ‘getting kids outside‘ is NOT an either/or proposition in this ‘green media’ series, right? Good. Please chime in if you’ve visited any of these worlds and add to the conversation!

Eco Child’s Play Interviews Scott Arpajian, Co-Founder of Dizzywood, Part One

Amy Jussel: How does Dizzywood differ from the other 150 virtual worlds for kids out there in various stages of development?

Scott Arpajian: Dizzywood has its own storyline of characters, settings and non-linear plot twists complete with a classic villain where kids use their imagination and resources to put an end to his nefarious purposes…We use story archs and humor woven into a virtual play space where kids control the outcomes and role play using their imagination…we want to give kids as much free agency as we can, while keeping it really safe and fun.

Basically, everything is customizable, so kids are literally using tools and templates to ‘build out’ the world and its content so they have ownership of the process.

Amy Jussel: So do you consider Dizzywood to be open-ended play, like CCFC’s Susan Linn refers to in The Case for Make-Believe?

Scott Arpajian: Well, it’s open-ended in the sense that there’s no set beginning, middle and end like a linear story, and it’s also not a paperdoll approach where kids just make an avatar and cruise around inside a gaming platform. It’s really collaborative play, incorporating the benefits of a strong storyline with participatory play that kids guide and redirect within the world.

Imagination in virtual play has values beyond traditional education, because it’s so effective in scaling real life events into making virtual learning fun. Although I’ve gotta say…Dizzywood is NOT an education site per se. It’s being piloted for classroom use in some areas, but I want to make it clear that it’s not designed to be an eco or edu world.

Amy Jussel: So Dizzywood wrote the tree-planting INTO the storyline for Earth Day? As a special event?

Scott Arpajian: Well, we have daily events and daily quests, and our storyline is dynamic so it’s ever-changing and fluid…Since our site is collaborative play and not curriculum, we had some flexibility with how we were going to phase it in and test its success…

When we started the tree-planting project for Earth Day, we weren’t sure where it would go, or even IF it would be successful, but we wanted to do something really fun and chose to incorporate the eco-message into the actions of the kids’ arch-nemesis Emperor Withering. Basically, Dizzywood’s resident villain destroyed the trees of Wildwood Glen, and the kids were challenged to plant a tree to help the cause…informally learning about reforestation.

Amy Jussel: Learning without feeling like they’re learning. Sounds familiar. Can you explain what exactly ‘collaborative play’ means in your world, and how it relates to your tree-planting project?

Scott Arpajian: Basically, we’re urging cooperation among kids while conveying that each child can (and does!) make a difference. With the trees, we never told the kids the hows or whys of getting from point A to point B…they were given the challenge and figured out for themselves how the virtual trees would ‘grow faster’ and flower and bloom the more the community helped each other, sharing seeds, swapping skills, teaming up, that kind of thing.

They figured out how to make it ‘work’ on their own…That’s one of the ways Dizzywood differs a lot from lesson-based learning or edu-games. Figure it out, talk to each other…share your knowledge. That’s a life skill in itself.

Part Two of ECP Interview with Scott Arpajian of Dizzywood continues tomorrow. (with links to eco-faves for tree-planting too!) Visual Credits/Dizzywood.com and their blog

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