ECP Interview With Dizzywood’s Scott Arpajian, Part Two

From action steps to green your child’s school to kids actions inspired by green media games and eco-focus, today we’ll continue where we left off in Part One of our Eco Child’s Play Green Media Mini-Series, honoring kids’ green media that embeds positive cues and meaningful play, and turning that inspiration into action.

At left is Dizzywood’s celebration of Wildwood Glen’s reforestation, where kids planted 15,000 trees in online to offline eco-parity, partnering with The Arbor Day Foundation. I’ve added a slew of other tree-planting ideas and sites at the end of this piece to get ready for 9-22-08, worldwide Tree Planting Day coming up in the next couple weeks. In keeping with the green media theme of hope, promise and eco-renewal…here’s more from my interview with Scott Arpajian, Co-Founder of preteen virtual world, Dizzywood…

• » See also: Organic Flower Arrangments
• » Get Eco Child’s Play by RSS or sign up by email.

Amy Jussel: Are kids excited about the aspect of planting REAL trees and making a difference in the REAL world or is the online to offline bridge more of a draw for parents who then ‘sanction’ their gameplay?

Scott Arpajian: The imaginative play and hands-on collaboration help kids feel empowered by literally ‘bringing back’ the devastated forest and seeing it flourish.

Seeing pollution go away and the creatures and colors and trees begin to come back on the screen in a virtual world is powerful in itself…but when you add a real component, it takes the teamwork to a deeper level.

There’s no doubt children ‘get it’ in terms of real world hope and promise. It’s one thing to make that transformation onscreen but much tougher in the REAL world. That’s why we placed a permanent statue into the world commemorating the actions of the kids. When they see it, they’re reminded they personally contributed to planting the 15,000 trees to restore the forest…online and offline. When new kids come to the world it sets the tone for the community as one of cooperation too.

Amy Jussel: How did the Arbor Day Foundation partnership come into the mix? I know we talked about orgs like Plant A Tree Today and cause-marketing on Facebook, and lots of other worthy partners in the U.S. and abroad…

Scott Arpajian: When we launched the tree planting for Earth Day, our challenge was how long we could keep it going both financially and pragmatically, adding several thousand trees over a short period of time! The Arbor Day Foundation was perfect for us logistically, being in the U.S.; Dizzywood itself is global, with kids from all over the world in the community, but we wanted to keep it manageable and nearby this round, with time zones and all. Kids saw the real life benefit and made it scale even faster once they caught onto the participatory process to figure out how it was done.

Amy Jussel: What do you mean by having the kids “build out” Dizzywood’s virtual world themselves to give them control and ownership of their sphere of play?

Scott Arpajian: It’s not a ‘build out’ like in Second Life where people are buying real estate on the grid and virtual goods and stuff, it’s a template concept, where kids use their collaborative and creative skills and also feedback to us what works and what they think is fun and cool. For instance…We made it so that the trees would be ‘droppable’ anywhere in the world. Once they worked together to nurture it, they had to decide where they wanted to plant it, permanently in the world. It’s their own contribution that remains there, and it’s pretty powerful when kids SEE their creation has altered the look of the world, and the impact they’ve made.

What’s next for Dizzywood? What other collaborative play elements will Scott Arpajian and his team deem viable for an online to offline segue using informal learning? Find out more on Shaping Youth in the Positive Picks category as Scott talks about character pillars, their partnership with the YMCA, collaborative play ranging from rock piles to citizen scientists.

Meanwhile, even though Dizzywood has finished their virtual tree planting project, kids can continue the virtual planting fun at World Wildlife Fund’s My Baby Tree.org planting trees in Indonesia via their micro-donation site. As EcoGeek reports, WWF’s partnership with Google Earth enables very cool geo-tagging technology so kids can see where there donor dollars ended up in the world. Kids can virtually plant the trees and literally watch them grow …

Excellent synergy of eco-techno greening for good!

Here are a few more tree-planting sites, just in time for Tree Planting Day 9-22-08!

ENO Tree Planting Day 9-22-08: A global virtual school for environmental awareness and sustainable development, ENO Tree Day is also part of the Billion Tree Campaign by the United Nations Environment Programme. (very cool ‘LiveEarth’ style concept of Tree Planting Day 9-22-08, with UNESCO/Grenada’s Ministry of Education joining the rest of the world planting trees starting at noon in Oceania following the path of the sun, to Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, with over 1000 schools in 102 countries planting tens of thousands of trees last year at this annual event!)

Plant A BioFuel Tree: Help rural poor generate income and clean energy by planting
1 million trees on land that cannot support food production

I Plant A Tree: Community-based social media hub for users to plant trees, log progress on the site, measure CO2 saved and share knowledge exchanged.

My Baby Tree: World Wildlife Fund’s geo-tagging techno partnership with Google Earth for donors to plant a virtual tree and watch it grow.

Plant An Idea, Plant A Tree: Armenian Tree Project Curriculum (87pp)

Plant-A-Tree, U.K/Woodland Trust: UK’s leading woodland conservation charity for over 30 years

C’mon Let’s Plant A Tree! Social media network Orkut’s Plant A Tree blog site, in India

Plant A Tree Today/PATT Foundation: Based in Thailand, this 2005 charity is doing great work throughout southeast Asia, using both action/education based children’s outreach.

Trees For the Future: A twenty year 501c3 heritage, with an even richer global backstory dating from the mid-70s, this worthy org has a current project in the Philippines planting ‘Ipil-Ipil’ trees as the kids call them, so their newsletter is aptly named Johnny Ipil-seed! Check out the host of incredible work to their credit.

Arbor Day Foundation: Dizzywood’s partner org for the virtual collaborative learning storyline… With about three decades of sharing seeds of knowledge, this U.S. hub is a leader in tree planting, nurturing, celebration and conservation of trees by use of innovative means. (partnering, pledges, sponsorships, and all kinds of green media magic to bring back our natural forests!)

Support any and all of these worthy sites, and add more in the comments if you have ‘em! Meanwhile, stay tuned for more positive picks in green kids’ media next week!

Tweet This Post