Miller's Reflection of the Google Lively Protest

It has been a long protest. Our class has worked very hard in trying to get Google not to delete Lively. I will say that no matter what happens tomorrow, Lively will always be remembered. The Digiteen Dream Team has made sure of it. Thank you everyone for your undying support of our quest to save our program. We have worked hard, and I believe that Google will think twice about deleting another program.

About two months ago, our class heard some of the worst news that we had ever heard. Our beloved program, Lively, was being shut down. I was furious! How dare Google shut down a program just because it did not bring the money that the other programs brought. Instead of just standing back and letting Google delete Lively, we took action. We became the Digiteen Dream Team. Together with a group of Lively activists called the Livelyzens, our class started protesting Google in hopes of stopping Lively's shutdown.


One of the major tools in the protest was our blog. We used our group protest name, Digiteen Dream Team, and created an account on Blogger. Digiteen Dream Team became a huge success! We posted many blogs from 10 Things About Lively to 10 Ways that Lively can make money, and much, much more. Our blog is rapidly growing in its popularity. We have twenty-eight readers and are ranked 427,628 in the world. Read Write Web, the twelfth ranked blog in the world also linked to us. I had many jobs in this protest.
I posted many blogs. In these blogs, I expressed my feelings about Lively's deletion. Here are some of my best posts:
New Protest on Lively
10 Things About Lively
Letter to Google
I also wrote a letter to Google telling them how we used Lively and why they should keep it. When we had the protest in the Lively Protester Room, I moderated the speeches. My roles were simply pieces of the puzzle of trying to save Lively. Everyone worked together to have this wonderful protest.


Because we had created avatars to teach the seventh graders digital citizenship, we decided to use them in the fight for Lively. We used our avatars to speak for us in the virtual world. We devised speeches for them, and also formed a group of Lively-loving avatars.

There were so many rooms that we created in Lively, but my favorite one has got to be the Lively Protester Room.

Many great things happened in that room. One of the first protest that was held in a virtual world was held in our protester room. It was such a big space, and it really set the mood for our protest. Tyler R. did a great job of designing the room. He his an amazing virtual world designer.


I created many things in the last two weeks. I sent an email to Google to express my thoughts of Lively's deletion. I sent the email about a week ago to the multi-billion dollar company. I posted the email as a blog post on the Digiteen Dream Team Blog. They have yet to reply. I posted many blog posts. New Protest was a blog that I posted to inform Lively users of the new protest on December 18. I also added Support From Our Digiteen Friends. This post thanked Mr. Ken Ronkowitz for making another blog about our fight for Lively. Another blog post that I helped write was 10 Things About Lively. In this post, we gave ten reasons for Google to keep Lively. These reasons came from our experiences with Lively. While we were participating in the protest in our protester room, one of our supporters took a picture of us. The picture is example of a lot of hard work and a lot of heart.


There are many things that you must do to have an effective blog. First, you must be very frequent in your posting your blogs. The more you post, the more people will visit you blog. Another thing that you must do is comment on other peoples' blogs. If you show respect for their blogs, then they will most likely come to your blog. You also need to write about something that you are interested in. If you make your blog interested, you will get more readers. Another great idea is to write your blog in Google Documents. This allows you to proofread your blog and catch your mistakes.
Analyzing a blog is not hard if you have the right programs. Our class used a great program called StatCounter to keep up with all the traffic and views of our blog. StatCounter is a great tool because it gives you the number of unique and returning visitors everyday, and the number of page loads everyday. In keeping up with our ranking, we used Technorati. Technorati is a wonderful program that allows you to not only see the ranking of your blog, but also see the comments that other people left on your blog. We were able to see the good and not so good things that people said about us.
The statistics showed that blogging is a very effective way to reach other people. Because blogging is on the world-wide web, it is a better way to get your ideas to a particular group or company. We were very surprised at some of the countries that viewed our blog. Many of them were from the Middle East, which we all now is not very democratic. We were fighting for something that we believed in and a change that we wanted to make. This shows us that people in those countries care about democracy and are interested in other peoples' beliefs and ideas.


In order for bloggers to have a popular blog, they need to make their blog interesting to read. When you want people to listen, you need to include many links to sources. Adding links gives support and back-up to your cause on the internet. Another idea is to post pictures and videos. Bright, colorful pictures and videos give blogs appeal and attracts more readers. Posting blogs daily also makes more people come to your blog. By giving more information about your cause every day, more readers like to come and see what is new. Commenting on other peoples' blogs makes them comment back. In this way, more readers will come to your blog.


I believe that every single minute of every single hour of every single day spent trying to save Lively was worth it. We put all our efforts into saving this wonderful program. We protested for a cause that we were very passionate about. We loved Lively, and we did not let it die without a fight.
I have learned many useful tools that I will be able to use for the rest of my life. I have learned how to blog. Blogging is something that you can do anytime to express your ideas to the rest of the people in the world. I also learned how get publicity to your cause. We contacted many news centers like CNN and NBC to tell them about our fight to save Lively. One of the most important things that I learned was how to make your cause known. I am so glad that we got a chance to learn protesting be because it will give you the ability to stand up for you beliefs in the future. This protest has given me confidence to let my voice be heard.
I believe that students should have the ability to work with Web 2 technologies. Their is a risk of their work being deleted, but their are risks everywhere! Everyday students face the risk of losing a project offline. Why should it be any different online? Most students also know more about Web 2 technologies than adults do. If students are passionate about the project that they are doing, they should be allowed to do it despite the risks that it might bring. Many people respond better to students taking a stand than they do when adults protest. When our class started protesting, some people thought that a group of students could not make their voice heard. A lot of people; however, supported us because we were passionate in our beliefs and just in our protesting.


Lively was an absolutely amazing virtual world. I do not think that any other virtual island will be as good. Lively was very kid-friendly. Lively did not allow adult actions such as talking off clothes or making really rude movements. It was perfect for what we did. We are testing a new Open Sim. Because of the protesting that we did, we acquired an island free for one year. The island that was designed for us was beautiful. The only problem with it was that we met a predator on the first day of testing. When we make the rooms private, I believe that it will be safer and more fun.


I am very glad that we decided to protest. We used Lively so much and to let it die would be an injustice. Our main goal was to save Lively. Despite all our efforts, I think that Google is still going to shut down our beloved program. Our efforts were not in vain. We made Google realize that you cannot delete a program that other people are using without a fight. We made the world realize that it does not matter how old you are or where you come from, you can still make a change. If you are passionate about something, you can change the world.

Thank you once again for all the support that you have given us. On behalf of the Digiteen Dream Team, I say thank you on a great protest. I hope that everyone has a happy holiday.

KEEP ALIVELY!!!!!

Saving Lively - Trent's Google Lively Reflection

this is what happens when you press a wrong button

My class has been teaching seventh graders about digital citizenship with a program called Lively by google. We were just starting to get through to them when Google decided that Lively was useless and is going to shut it down. We are doing everything that we can to try and stop them. I have been posting comments and replying to people commenting back on our blog (www.digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com). That may not seem like a big deal but when you put soo much time and effort into something and people say that it is all for nothing it makes you really mad. We have all been trying to make them understand that is all for a cause, to keep the kids safe. Right now my main goal is trying to get Google to go open source with Lively.
This is the room that we are going to burry our avatars in

I have also been working on making the rooms and t-shirts that we are using to protest in Lively. The t-shirts were really agrivating to make because every time I would get about done I would press a wrong button and the whole thing would go blank (This is what happend one of the time I pressed a wrong button. Try working on something for three days and then hitting a wrong button and having to start all over, frustrating isn't it.

I have made several rooms but to tell you the truth none of them even came close to one of the rooms that T-rob made. His rooms were amazing. We could not have done any of this if it were not for him. His artistic ability is just amazing. The only room that I have made that we are going to use is that westwood burial. We are going to use it to burry our avatars. The message behind this protest is ," We might as well go ahead and burry our avatars, their going away anyway."

T-rob is still the one that I am going to give all of my credit to. He just does soo much work on our rooms that it is redicilious. He is amazing at making and editing rooms. I have made a whole lot of rooms but none of them even come close to any of the rooms that he has made. His worst room is soo much better than my best room that it is not even funny.

Sydnee's digiteen Dream Team Reflection on Google Lively

- Our class has been working fora month on the Lively project. When we heard it was shutting down, we were very upset. Our freshmen class has used Lively to teach middle school aged students about digital citizenship.
-When we heard Lively was shutting down our class decided to create a blog to reach out and tell others about Lively and the great uses of it. On the blog I added a video Jordan, Tinsley, and I filmed. Kunjan and Virginia were protesting Lively shutting down and telling everyone the great uses. My classmates and I have also reached out by commenting on other peoples blogs so they will link to ours.
-My avatar has changed numerous time throughout our project. When we first started this project I was "Gadget Pig". Now, I am a normal person. My favorite room was the "Lively Protester Room." This room was my favorite because of the layout and what we have done in that room.

-During these past two weeks I have primarily focused on our class's blog, and alerting the media. Jordan and I helped Miller with our class's ten reasons we love Google Lively. Jordan and I came up with the ten reasons and then Miller elaborated some on each of them. Most of our reasons had to do with how much we loved Lively and how it helped us teach the middle schools students. Jordan, Tinsley, and I filmed Kunjan and Virginia expressing their feelings for why Lively should not be shut down in their video "Digiteens are Protesting Google Lively Shutting Down". We edited the movie and added it as a blog post on our "Digiteen Dream Team" blog. On Friday we sent our movie to Fox news with Mrs. Vicki's help. On Monday Mrs. Vicki had each of us split up and comment back to a blog that commented on ours. I commented on the "Read Write Web" and told everyone how devastated my classmates and I would be if all of our hard work was deleted.
- Blogging correctly has many benefits. I am very glad Mrs. Vicki has taught us to blog because I think that has helped our success with reaching out to others about Google Lively on our "Digiteen Dream Team" blog. One major thing that you have to do when you are blogging is look at your blog often and comment back to others who are reading so that they remain interested in what you are blogging about.
- I think where our class's blog is ranking is very good. Considering the fact that our blog has only been up for a number of weeks and is ranked 337,303 is amazing. Mrs. Vicki was telling us how great our progress was because it took a little over a year for her blog to become that popular. I think that if we continue to blog our amount of traffic we are picking up will become higher. We need to continue to reach out to everyone reading our blog and add comments on other people's blog and continue to get the word out about this amazing program. I think that it tells us if you are active with your blog and reply to comments left on your blog, that people will become interested in what you are doing and stay interested.
-People get readers for their blogs many ways. If you post comments on other blogs you are getting the message out to people who did not know that it existed. I think that if you give your blog an interesting name it will keep people interested. Adding blog posts weekly, adding videos, and pictures is another way to keep the people reading your blog interested.I also think that if you comment back to people who read your blog you will help people to continue reading your blog.
-The Google Lively project has been an amazing project to work on. I feel like the effort my classmates and I put into the Lively project is well worth our time. I think that if you are helping younger children and they are learning from what you do it is definitely worthwhile. I have learned many things about virtual worlds since becoming part of the Lively project. I have learned about virtual worlds and how they operate, how to create rooms, and how to treat people better online.I think teachers should give their students a chance. They might do better at exploring and learning about virtual worlds than you think. I feel like if you give them a chance and it does not work then you can take it away because you have a reason
-I do not really care where our next virtual world is.I think that if we have to explore our next world like we did Lively it will be just as easy if not easier. I know that Mrs. Vicki will make the right decision for our class when we find a virtual world.

Daniel's views on Google Lively

Lively is a place to learn and think on the internet It helps kids that normally aren't cool at school to feel better about themselves. We used it for educatonal purposes to learn about virtual life . It helped us to be better people online and do things right and set an example for other kids online to . It shows us how to use digital citizenship and to teach others how to .Its not write for people to be able to do anything online .

This is my creation of my avatar . she is the singer for our lively video even though its a boys voice .The reason why i created a girl is that she was the only avatar that could hold the microphone

Effective blogging is the right way to blog and to make it safe and effective . It makes people want to come back for more and it makes the viewer look more into the topic . The way to effectively blog is to leave the viewer a way to effectively answer the question you are asking .Blog post are about making people learn about what you are talking about and getting your point across .

Ethan's Views on Lively

Around a month ago my fellow Westwood colleagues and I began working in lively and exploring this great virtual world. We found it extremely exiting and interesting also it was very educational we found for kids from the ages of twelve years and up to teach about what to do and what not to do on the internet. Most of us have worked very hard in lively and were very upset when we foundout that google was shuting it down after all the time that we had put into lively. That is why we formed a protest and have tried to stop google from shutting down and have spent many hours in doing so. One of the ways that we did this was by creating a blog called digiteen dream team.It was catchy and was appropriate for the cause you can find it at http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com/ please come and support us at this website because it is our best chance and last chance at saving lively. We track our blog by using technorati a blog website that ranks blogs and provides good publicty for your blog. Another way we tracked our blog was by using statcounter.com. In our lively protest i help create sound effects for some of our movies that we streamed in during our protest. Other than this I havent done anything with lively beacuse I never was in a group that had to do anything in lively. One way we and many other people do to get more people to read our blog is by advertising our product and leaving comments on other popular blogs about what we are trying to do and asking them to visit your blog. I have left comments on read write saying what that we are doing and trying to get people to understand what we are doing and what are goals we want to acomplish. I know that my effort was definantly worth plus it was in doing so. One of the lessons i will take from this great experience is that even though you may not feel important and you may not feel as if you can change the way people view you but you can. If someone where to ask me what i thought about student doing work on the internet and posting things online I would simply say everthing in life is a chance you just have to make the choice that you think is best and dont look back. I cant wait to start our digiteen island and am very exicted about it. I hope that we can learn to care what other poeple think and do what we think is best.

Virginia's Views on Google Lively

1) On 12-10-08, Westwood Schools made Lively history. Our ninth grade class held the first virtual protest on Lively by Google. After the protest we still wanted our voices heard so we created a blog post called the Digiteen Dream Team Blog. My role in the blog was recording a Woogi World video telling how we used the website educationally.

2)

My favorite room was the Protester Room. It was my favorite because it was colorful and my classmates worked the hardest on it.


3)
1. Lively Protest
I was in the room at the time of the protest. I also helped with the background sounds.

2. Digiteen Dream Team Blogpost
Kunjan and I recorded a Save Lively video that we sent to CNN and the NY Times. We posted this video on
the digiteen dream team blog.

3. Woogi World Blogposts
Krysten, Tinsley, Kunjan, and I all did this blog post. We did it to help everyone see that virtual worlds can
be used for educational purposes.

4)
Some measures of effective blogging are posting a lot of blogs and doing them over something that would be interesting to read. You can analyze a blog's rankings by going to Technorati. Yes, this lets us know that the blog was global.

5)
A few ways to build up traffic on your blog is to post a lot of them, to leave comments on other blogs, and to be professional.

6)
I definitely think the effort was worth it. I have learned that kids can make a difference on the internet. I disagree; I think that students should work with Web 2 technologies because it is what we will be using in the future and we need to go ahead and get prepared.

7)
I say I hope it will be half as successful as Lively, and I hope we can branch out on new ways to teach kids digital citizenship on the other worlds.

Rebuilding Lively

Hello Everyone,
I hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday. I have some great news. As I was checking the comments, I discovered that Bowen had left a comment saying that their was a company that was rebuilding Lively. I was ecstatic. This is an amazing breakthrough in our protest. I visited the website. It looked almost identical to Lively except for a language difference. It was awesome! Thank you Bowen for informing us about this amazing company. Thank you everyone for your support. Our efforts have paid off. Lively is alive again.

The Fight Before christmas: Saving Lively

a well titled reflection From Pate:

About two months ago, my class used Google Lively to teach seventh graders about digital citizenship. Now Google is shutting it down and we've been engaged in a protest against Google about shutting us down. We've created a blog called the digiteendreamteam to communicate and tell the world what's going on. We've all contributed to the project in so many ways. I visited other blogs and commented on what they've been saying about us. It seems to work and we're getting a lot of support.

In Lively, you can create rooms to hang out in. I never did create a room, but my favorite room was the westwood hangout. It was a giant turn-table with a record spinning in the center of the room. You could also create avatars. Mine was named JohnyReb.
To get support for our blog, we all went to different blogs to tell people about our protest. We even started sending e-mails to TV shows. I sent one to the Today Showtelling them about the struggle to save Lively. We're hoping to gain support from them.

To gain support for a blog, there are many measures you must make. You need a catchy name so that people will be interested in it, you need to blog a lot so it doesn't get boring, and you need to look at other people's comments to see how popular it is. There are also ways to analyze the blog. One way is to go to the website called technorati. This website is a search engine for blogs and will rank the blogs you want to see. Another way is the stat-camera. This device counts who has visited your page in your recent history. These things help tell you how popular blogs can be. They can also show just how popular and effective blogging can be.

There are many ways you can tell people about your blog. The thing we did was go to other blogs and linked to ours so they would know who we are. Another way is to make a video to get the word out, but linking to the other blogs seems to be more effective.

This protest has deffinately been worth the effort. I've learned that no matter how big a company is, you can still stand up to it for what you believe in. I would tell people who say that using computers to teach their kids should be private so that nothing can be deleted, at least not by the outside world. I fully agree that Web 2 should be used in classrooms to teach kids.

We've started looking for more virtual worlds to use when Lively is gone. I think we should use opensim on reactiongrid. We have already built an island in it and it looks cooler than Lively. Even though this virtual world may be better, we will never forget Lively.

Related articles by Zemanta

• In Google We Trusted and Now Our Project's Busted
• Five Reasons Why Google Should Reconsider Lively

Kunjan's Reflection on Google Lively

Digiteen Dream Team is a website we created to blog about our protest on Lively. Lively is a 3D virtual world that is created by Google. Because Google is shutting Lively down, my classmates and I protested Google.

This is my Avatar. I have not done many things with designing room, but I gave a speech in the protest. In my speech, I talked about Woogi World. In order to find your ranking, you go to Technorati. By posting many blogs, your blogs will be very effective. Also if you promote your blog as you leave comments on other people's blogs, your blog would be more effective. We found our traffic on Stat Counter. to cause traffic about your blog, you should talk about it and make videos to promote it.

I do believe that my blog was worth it.

The whole protest showed that 3D worlds are a great way to do many things.

I think that not doing what you think is right because it has a chance of failure is ridiculous. I think that all virtual worlds should be considered. Lively was a great way to teach people about digital citizenship. If Google saw how great it works, they would not shut it down.

Livelyzens Celebrate Christmas (and the End of Time)

This Livelyzen youtube video celebrates Lively, Christmas, and the end of time (for Lively, that is.)



So sad to see Lively go.

Riley's Reflection on Google Lively

During the digiteen project we made a blog called the Digiteen Dream Team. In this blog my job was to comment on other blogs created by my other classmates at school.

This is me in lively.

Some of the measures of effective blogging have been to add some things that people will think would be cool to read about and to have people to comment on them. Some of the cool things that you do in blogs are track how many people that enter and where they are from by going to the View Stats of Our Blog. They tell you a lot by telling you where there from, how many have been on in days, weeks, and etc, and how long they stay on.

Some of the ways that bloggers build "traffic" to there blog is make is easy and obvious and be more focused on the topic that there talking about.

I think that it was important that digiteen brought attention to lively. Although I think that if Google wants to shut down lively they have the right to if they need the space or money for something else. I learned for this situation that if they want to shut things down people are going to protest no matter what. And I would say that to the people using the web 2 technologies to go at it its worth the experience so that you could use it in the future.

I think that we should us the second life virtual world because its well known around the world on the internet and more people would notice.

T-rob's reflection on Google Lively

T-rob was our very gifted world-creator in Lively.  It is an amazing talent that none of us knew he had, but he does.  If a gaming or animation company could get this student, even now, he'd be a gift!

This is t-rob's reflection:

>

DigiteenDreamTeam
My part was to make all the rooms that we would use in the protest. I was in charge of trying out new virtual worlds for our class since Lively is closing.

My favorite room is the Stairway to Heaven because I have built a stairway to heaven and a hotel over the ocean. My other favorite room was Lively Protester Room

These were my favorite rooms because I enjoyed making them and then communicating with other people there. I have made all the rooms and decorated them.

Having good titles and replying to other peoples blogs. I look them up on the technoroti I think that is how you spell it. It tells you how many people have the same opinion as you and the people who think differently about certain topics. By commenting on other peoples blogs that way they will look at your blogs and comment on yours.

Yes, some people will never get the chance we had to fight for what we believe in. Learned that some companies no matter how big can be selfish and only care about the money.  I disagree they are great places to learn and communicate with friends.Yes, I think we should search for the next best virtual world that everyone enjoys."

Hope's Reflection on Google Lively

This is Hope's reflection:

"I am a freshman at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. I take many different classes. One class I take is computer fundamentals. Over the past few months my ninth grade class and I have been teaching seventh grade students about the nine aspects of digital citizenship through Google Lively.

Lively is a web-based virtual environment produced by Google Inc. This project was a great success and was worth our time. The young children had fun and learned how to behave online. Lively was a great teaching tool used to teach the lessons for this educational project. We have recently received information that Google Lively is shutting down. We are very disappointed to know that our hard work and effort is going to be destroyed. The long hours that we have contributed to this project will be for nothing.

We have tried to save Google Lively in many different ways. We created an online protest room on Lively and invited everyone to participate in it. Trent H. created our online protest shirts that turned out to be a great accomplishment. Tyler R. created our protest room, designed the theme of the room, and add the furniture and many accessories. We created a Digiteen Dream Team website used to tell people about our fight to keep Lively alive. Digiteen Dream Team is a program created by several ninth grade students at Westwood Schools used to express our opinions about Google Lively shutting down. We have various blogs about the goals we are trying to accomplish and how we fell about this amazing program shutting down.

I contributed to this project in many ways. I add information to the numerous blogs and commented on many people's different opinions on the acts that we have preformed. I took notes to keep are project organized. Miller S. helped me keep the notes proper and neat. She was a great contributor to our project and we could not have done it without her. I sent messages to various news stations which helped us make our opinion known around the world. I created many of the videos we posted online and sent to important people that could help us with our problem.

I left a comment on Technorati about empowering students and blogging. I explained our situation to the blogger and thanked them for their feedback and support. I also sent an e-mail to the Oprah Winfrey website concerning Google Lively shutting down. I told her about our problem and asked her for support. I told her to tell her friends and family about our problem to make it known throughout the nation.

There are many measures used in effective blogging. You must first create a name that draws attention to the bloggers. You should always create a video explaining your problem and ways you plan to solve it. You can analyze a blog's ranking and traffic by going to the Technorati website. Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. Your ranking is the number the people who have viewed our page. Our ranking was excellent for our project, but out teacher said that we still needed to reach out to as many people as possible. The traffic is how popular your page or blog is. These statistics show you how much progress you are accomplishing and how many people across the world are interested in your opinion.

You can create a name that draws the reader's attention. You need a name that will keep the bloggers interested in the topic you are talking about. You can create a video about your interests and goals and post them weekly. You can also posts pictures that represent your topic. You should comment back to people who give you feedback on your problem.

I feel that the effort was worth it. I had a lot of fun and it was worth my time and effort. My class and I learned how to create an online virtual world, how to create rooms, and how to treat people online. I learned the nine different aspects of digital citizenship and I learned how to be safe and secure online. I think that students should be allowed to explore virtual worlds after being told by a teacher how to behave properly online. I think that the teachers should give their students a chance before they band them from a certain program. I disagree because I think that the teachers should give the children time to learn about the program before they do not allow them to use it. There are numerous ways to prevent your work from getting deleted online.

I think we should create new rooms similar to our old rooms, but we should find ways to improve them. We had symbolic rooms that were created for a cause and I do not think they should be deleted, because they represent the hard work and long hours that we put into this project. We did a great job at creating rooms that went along with the topic we were talking about. I want to give credit to Tyler R. for making our Google Lively rooms a great success. I know that Mrs. Vicki will help her students make the appropriate chose of which type of room to create.

I learned many lessons throughout this project and I am devastated that this program is being shut down. I wish I could convince Google to change their minds. We have tried various ways to keep Lively from shutting down and it has not worked. Thank you Google Lively for creating this project and I hope you will reconsider your decision."

Nolan's Reflection on Google Lively

Nolan's reflection on Lively:

About two months ago, our class heard some of the worst news that we had ever heard. Our beloved program, Lively, was being shut down. I was furious! How dare Google shut down a program just because it did not bring the money that the other programs brought. Instead of just standing back and letting Google delete Lively, we took action. We became the Digiteen Dream Team. Together with a group of Lively activists called the Livelyzens, our class started protesting Google in hopes of stopping Lively's shutdown.


One of the major tools in the protest was our blog. We used our group protest name, Digiteen Dream Team, and created an account on Blogger. Digiteen Dream Team became a huge success! We posted many blogs from 10 Things About Lively to 10 Ways that Lively can make money, and much, much more. Our blog is rapidly growing in its popularity. We have twenty-eight readers and are ranked 427,628 in the world. Read Write Web, the twelfth ranked blog in the world also linked to us. I had many jobs in this protest.
I posted many blogs. In these blogs, I expressed my feelings about Lively's deletion. Here are some of my best posts:
New Protest on Lively
10 Things About Lively
Letter to Google
I also wrote a letter to Google telling them how we used Lively and why they should keep it. When we had the protest in the Lively Protester Room, I moderated the speeches. My roles were simply pieces of the puzzle of trying to save Lively. Everyone worked together to have this wonderful protest.


Because we had created avatars to teach the seventh graders digital citizenship, we decided to use them in the fight for Lively. We used our avatars to speak for us in the virtual world. We devised speeches for them, and also formed a group of Lively-loving avatars.

There were so many rooms that we created in Lively, but my favorite one has got to be the Lively Protester Room.

Many great things happened in that room. One of the first protest that was held in a virtual world was held in our protester room. It was such a big space, and it really set the mood for our protest. Tyler R. did a great job of designing the room. He his an amazing virtual world designer.


I created many things in the last two weeks. I sent an email to Google to express my thoughts of Lively's deletion. I sent the email about a week ago to the multi-billion dollar company. I posted the email as a blog post on the Digiteen Dream Team Blog. They have yet to reply. I posted many blog posts. New Protest was a blog that I posted to inform Lively users of the new protest on December 18. I also added Support From Our Digiteen Friends. This post thanked Mr. Ken Ronkowitz for making another blog about our fight for Lively. Another blog post that I helped write was 10 Things About Lively. In this post, we gave ten reasons for Google to keep Lively. These reasons came from our experiences with Lively. While we were participating in the protest in our protester room, one of our supporters took a picture of us. The picture is example of a lot of hard work and a lot of heart.


There are many things that you must do to have an effective blog. First, you must be very frequent in your posting your blogs. The more you post, the more people will visit you blog. Another thing that you must do is comment on other peoples' blogs. If you show respect for their blogs, then they will most likely come to your blog. You also need to write about something that you are interested in. If you make your blog interested, you will get more readers. Another great idea is to write your blog in Google Documents. This allows you to proofread your blog and catch your mistakes.
Analyzing a blog is not hard if you have the right programs. Our class used a great program called StatCounter to keep up with all the traffic and views of our blog. StatCounter is a great tool because it gives you the number of unique and returning visitors everyday, and the number of page loads everyday. In keeping up with our ranking, we used Technorati. Technorati is a wonderful program that allows you to not only see the ranking of your blog, but also see the comments that other people left on your blog. We were able to see the good and not so good things that people said about us.
The statistics showed that blogging is a very effective way to reach other people. Because blogging is on the world-wide web, it is a better way to get your ideas to a particular group or company. We were very surprised at some of the countries that viewed our blog. Many of them were from the Middle East, which we all now is not very democratic. We were fighting for something that we believed in and a change that we wanted to make. This shows us that people in those countries care about democracy and are interested in other peoples' beliefs and ideas.


In order for bloggers to have a popular blog, they need to make their blog interesting to read. When you want people to listen, you need to include many links to sources. Adding links gives support and back-up to your cause on the internet. Another idea is to post pictures and videos. Bright, colorful pictures and videos give blogs appeal and attracts more readers. Posting blogs daily also makes more people come to your blog. By giving more information about your cause every day, more readers like to come and see what is new. Commenting on other peoples' blogs makes them comment back. In this way, more readers will come to your blog.


I believe that every single minute of every single hour of every single day spent trying to save Lively was worth it. We put all our efforts into saving this wonderful program. We protested for a cause that we were very passionate about. We loved Lively, and we did not let it die without a fight.
I have learned many useful tools that I will be able to use for the rest of my life. I have learned how to blog. Blogging is something that you can do anytime to express your ideas to the rest of the people in the world. I also learned how get publicity to your cause. We contacted many news centers like CNN and NBC to tell them about our fight to save Lively. One of the most important things that I learned was how to make your cause known. I am so glad that we got a chance to learn protesting be because it will give you the ability to stand up for you beliefs in the future. This protest has given me confidence to let my voice be heard.
I believe that students should have the ability to work with Web 2 technologies. Their is a risk of their work being deleted, but their are risks everywhere! Everyday students face the risk of losing a project offline. Why should it be any different online? Most students also know more about Web 2 technologies than adults do. If students are passionate about the project that they are doing, they should be allowed to do it despite the risks that it might bring. Many people respond better to students taking a stand than they do when adults protest. When our class started protesting, some people thought that a group of students could not make their voice heard. A lot of people; however, supported us because we were passionate in our beliefs and just in our protesting.


Lively was an absolutely amazing virtual world. I do not think that any other virtual island will be as good. Lively was very kid-friendly. Lively did not allow adult actions such as talking off clothes or making really rude movements. It was perfect for what we did. We are testing a new Open Sim. Because of the protesting that we did, we acquired an island free for one year. The island that was designed for us was beautiful. The only problem with it was that we met a predator on the first day of testing. When we make the rooms private, I believe that it will be safer and more fun.


I am very glad that we decided to protest. We used Lively so much and to let it die would be an injustice. Our main goal was to save Lively. Despite all our efforts, I think that Google is still going to shut down our beloved program. Our efforts were not in vain. We made Google realize that you cannot delete a program that other people are using without a fight. We made the world realize that it does not matter how old you are or where you come from, you can still make a change. If you are passionate about something, you can change the world.

Hey I Need Help With My Open Sim Avatar

Hello, I am having trouble making my avatar a male on Open Sim and can not figure out how. So if anyone knows how could you please help me. I have tried searching but can not figure out how.

Dustin C's reflection on Google Lively

There was a lot of things that I liked about Google lively. One thing that I liked was the characters, you could move around freely and you could do almost whatever you wanted to. It also helps people to know how to access the internet. You could make your own rooms and you could put what you wanted in the room,and that's what I like about Google Lively.

Krysten's View on the Digiteen Dream

We'll be sharing the reflections of the students over the next few days.  Krysten's thoughts:


Digiteen Dream Team is what my classmates and I call ourselves. We protested Google because they are shutting down Lively, their virtual world. Lively is a great educational tool and we used it to teach our seventh graders about Digital Citizenship. We created a blog call the Digiteen Dream Team Blog to share with everyone. My personal job was to create a job with three of my classmates. We called it A Look into Virtual Worlds Teaching with Elementary Kids: Woogi World.

I did not have a favorite room. Here is my avatar:

We used Technorati to measure our blog ranking. We used statcounter.com to measure our traffic. On statcounter, we used maps to see where in the world people were looking at our blog. These statistics showed me that information can spread rapidly because of technology.

To build traffic for our blog, we commented on other blogs and we made sure to link to our blog. We also got traffic from Mrs. Vicki's blog.

I feel that our efforts were worth all the trouble we went through. We had people say mean things about us but we kept going. I learned to not let other people's opinions keep me from doing what is right. Some people think that we should not teach others about digital citizenship because they think it can be taught in twenty minutes and that it wont help. But the fact is that more and more people are using the internet and if they dont know how to use it properly, it could be dangerous.

Digiteen Final Goodbye

We are in our last lively room which as been constructed as a place to say goodbye to our avatars.  As with every time we have had to go on the public grid (which we DON'T like to do) we have had a few people in there bothering us this morning.

One of the drawbacks of Lively public rooms is the inability to remove people who are acting innappropriately.

http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-5642729103394665493

We are saying goodbye - after class discussion, we're sharing the URL with you.  Just know that there are some people in there who are acting obnoxious and with the way lively is now, we cannot remove them.

Lively is still a great tool, this room was constructed in a day.   The learning Curve is much longer in Second Life!

Tenacious Teacher meets the Digiteen Dream Team: Listen to our podcast

Yesterday we talked to the Tenacious Teacher on her podcast.  The students and Mrs. Davis discussed Google Lively, whether this process was worth it, and how we use Woogi World to teach elementary students.

Listen to the podcast

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dear Google
• Five Reasons Why Google Should Reconsider Lively
• In Google We Trusted and Now Our Project's Busted

New Protest

We are planning our final "protest" and funeral for Lively this upcoming Thursday, December 18th from 8:30 am until 9:00 am -- this will be held in a virtual world graveyard. Thus far, Google has not acknowledged our letters for this virtual world and we are prepared for Google Lively to shut down.

I feel very upset that Google will not acknowledge our efforts to save Lively. We have sent them emails and even held other protests that they still will not respond to. We have also emailed major news groups and posted multiple blogs about why Google should keep this wonderful program that we are in love with. I would like to say that no matter what happens, we will know that we did not give up without a fight. We stood, in the presence of a multi-billion dollar company, and fought. We did not let Google ever rest without telling more about our wonderful Lively.

The protest will be held in a graveyard to express the death of the program and all its avatars. We would love to have your support for the final protest where we pay tribute to our amazing program, and try one last time to convince Lively to keep it. I would like to thank you all for the valuable support that you have given us these past few weeks. Please check back here at 8:20 am on Thursday at which time the link to our graveyard will be posted.

Keep Alively!!!

What is Lively Like

Lively ( beta ) by Google from Dizzy Banjo on Vimeo.

This video from Dizzy Banjo was posted to vimeo.

Keep Lively Alive Facebook Group

There is a facebook group that you can join to promote Keeping Lively Alive.  Of course, here at Westwood, we'll have to join it on the weekends, but you're invited to join if you support the cause to keep Lively alive.

What we're doing now to take this further

What we're doing now to take this further

Reaching Out to The Media
One group of students has been working on videos to send to the big news companies. They are sending videos to sites like Fox, CNN, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. We know that without the support of the media companies we will never get Google's attention. We hope that the news will take us seriously, and we hope that they will support us.

Making A Video to Get the Word Out
Some of our students are making a video to send to different places so they can tell everybody else that google is shutting down Lively.
We are posting it on Youtube so we can get it out to other people around the globe so they can maybe help us save Lively. So, when you see this video you will know how much we enjoy to use Lively.

Blog Posts
The last group is making blog posts to put on our website. We are blogging about what we have and will be doing to get Google to keep Lively.

Letter to Google
We are sending a letter to google to try to convince them to not shut Lively down. We are trying to show them how Lively can help younger kids learn more about digital citizenship, and how to stay away from predators. It just helps them learn at a younger age.

Support From Our Digiteen Friends

One of our good friends and supporters from our Digiteen project, Mr. Ken Ronkowitz, created a blog post entitled Teens Fight To Save Google's Lively. We would like to thank him for his support and for posting that blog post for us. We appreciate everything that he did.

Students in Hong Kong are joining in the protest

Students and educators in Hong Kong are joining in the protest.  On the Kellett School ICT blog, they say:

 "

I'm a big fan of Google, I think they do some great things that impact hugely upon teaching and learning. We've used loads of their tools at Kellett... Earth, Sketchup, Maps, Docs, Picasa, and sometimes students even use it for searching!

However, their recent decision to shut down Google Lively at the end of December has caused dismay amongst many in education who see the opportunity to extend classrooms into virtual environments as an important strand of 21st Century Learning. Whilst it's true that major virtual grids exist elsewhere, such as Second Life, the ability to create your own rooms and customise them for your own students offers huge potential.

Education is still only just dipping it's toe into the possibilities that virtual worlds afford us, but it's companies like Google with it's track record of creating innovative tools for educators that should be leading the way, not bailing out without giving leading innovaters time to experiment and share their practise."

 

If you speak out, leave us a message and let us know so we can share your thoughts.

Will Google listen to educators who think they've really done a GREAT job with Lively or will they move ahead and make a decision that will impact their future profitability?

I wonder if perhaps Google will look back in 5-6 years on this moment like the Big 3 automakers look back with chagrin on their decision not to invest in eco-friendly cars in their Research & Development. 

Virtual worlds are the emerging future - how is Google going to search and index them without some sort of beta test bed to work on those algorithms?

This is a great tool for education, speak out!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Five Reasons Why Google Should Reconsider Lively
• In Google We Trusted and Now Our Project's Busted
• See the protest and the students talk about Google Lively, 3D worlds in education and Digital citizenship

10 Things About Lively

1. It helped us learn about virtual worlds.
Google Lively was one of the first virtual worlds that any of us had ever used. It was so much fun to be able to learn about Lively. We learned what a virtual worlds limits were. We learned correct behavior in the worlds. We also learned how to create our own virtual worlds.

2. We learned how to make respectable avatars on Lively.
Because we were going to be teaching seventh graders, we needed to set a good example. We all made our avatars resemble super heroes. These superheroes would engross the seventh graders, and make them respectable figures so that they would want to learn about Digital Citizenship.

3. It helped us teach in a safe environment.
One of our main concerns about teaching in a virtual world was that bad people that would use foul language would get into the room, and ruin the message that we were trying to teach the kids. Google Lively allowed us to make rooms private, which only let certain people enter the room. This made our teaching safe and fun.

4. It gave us a chance to interact with other people online.
When we were experimenting with Lively, we met a lot of really nice people that enjoyed the site just as well as we did. It was a great experience being able to meet people in a virtual world that we would never have been able to meet otherwise.

5. We learned how to work together as a team.
The biggest challenge of this project was being able to organize the lessons that we were scheduled to teach in the limited amount of time that we had. This project not only taught us time management, but also taught us to work in a group together. The lessons that we learned while doing this project are lessons that we will able to keep and use all through high school and the rest of our lives.

6. We learned how the internet can be both bad and good.
There is a lot of good on the internet. We can search for information about projects, receive and send emails, and watch funny music videos on YouTube. Let's face it. There is also a lot of bad on the internet as well. Our Lively rooms were infiltrated by few bad people who wanted to use bad language and bad gestures. In the midst of these happenings, we learned a lesson. We have to protect ourselves on the internet, and we have to teach other students how to handle themselves on the internet. These incidents provoked us to want to teach other people how to be safe online. Because we were exposed to these bad things on Lively, we were able to correct it. We took the bad incidents that we had and turned them into examples of what not to do when you are in a virtual classroom. The parents of our students were very appreciative of our teaching of digital citizenship. They were glad that their children were exposed to to a safe and friendly atmosphere in which they learned how to behave online. One parent said,"Yes, I enjoyed the teachings because it made my child take an interest in computers that he had never had before. He was woogi worlding it all the time."

7. We learned that lively is a very helpful place for kids.
It helps under aged kids understand how to be safe on the internet and how to avoid predators on it.
It also teaches them how to act to one another on the internet. They can talk to their friends on it and make it their own place
where only they can go to.The kids can talk to each other in private like they could not with their other friends.

8. We learned how to teach younger students in a way that they will understand.
The internet is a very fun and interesting place, where you can meet many different people from all over the world, but you need to know how to act towards the other people. One of the main differences about talking to someone over the internet and talking to someone face to face is your expressions. When you talk to someone over the internet, you need to be careful because people over the internet can't see your expressions or hear your voice, so even if you say something in a joking manner, they might take it as offensive. With Lively, the younger students got to experience this first hand with each other.

9. We learned to support each other.
Many times when you have to do a project, there is one person who takes over and does most of the work. But with this project, everyone in the group had to participate and do some work, because there was just too much stuff for one person to do. Since there was so much stuff to do, and since it was such a tough project, we had to help and support each other, or otherwise we never would have gotten the project done. This project got frustrating sometimes, and without the support from others, it wouldn't have been possible.

10. Most importantly we learned how to HAVE FUN!
On Lively you can do a lot of things that you can do in real life. You can make your own avatar like how you want it to look. Also on Lively you can make your own place for yourself and have friends over to swim. You can make your avatar do whatever you want it to do. They can flirt, fight, dance, talk, and make faces at another person. You can even party with your friends on it.

Letter to Google

Greetings Google,
My name is Miller. I am in the ninth grade at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. You are probably wondering what a small town girl like me is trying to talk to an enormous company like Google. The truth is, I might be small, but I have big ideas and a big mouth to go with it. You are probable familiar with the protest that is going on with your product, Lively. The rest of my classmates a group of people called the Livelyzens and I are part of that protest. We are very passionate about this program because we used it in major project.

About two months ago, our class started an action project in which we taught the seventh grade class at our school about Digital Citizenship. We created avatars, which we made to look like superheroes, and used them to teach the kids about the nine aspects of Digital Citizenship-Access
Communication, Literacy, Security and Safety, Etiquette, Rights and Responsibilities, Commerce, Law, Health and Wellness. When it came to choosing the virtual world that we would teach in, our teacher, Mrs. Vicki, recommended Google Lively. When we tested it out, we loved it. We loved the way that you could create a room designed especially for what you wanted. One cool thing that we found that we could do was block the room. Because we had had some run-ins with people that would use bad language, we decided to block the room. In this way, our students could learn in a safe environment with just us.

During our first lesson, Pearson Publishing was at our school to video about our technological use. They videoed our first session, and will feature it in a series that they are doing about technology in school. The first lesson went great! We had fun and most importantly, the seventh graders had fun. They love Lively! Our main goal was to teach them about digital citizenship. We accomplished our goal and then some. They also learned how to create their own virtual world. They were very eager to participate in the next lesson. This made us feel even more accomplished because we had made learning fun for them.

The reason that we are protesting you is because we are in love with your program. Lively has done so much for us. It has helped us teach students about Digital Citizenship, and it has taught us more about virtual worlds. As a matter of fact, Lively is not much different than the other programs that your company offers. It provides informational services just in a different way. It gave us information about virtual worlds that we would not have obtained without the help from your program.

I am asking you as a customer, a gamer, and a student to let lively live. You could let Lively go open source so that everyone will be able to use it. That would be a great answer to this great question. Please Google, on behalf of my classmates, the Livelyzens, and eveybody else around the world that loves this program, I am asking you-Please let Lively live!

This letter was written to Google in attempt to convince them to keep their program, Lively.

Video we sent to UReport for Fox News

Find more videos like this on Digi Teen

Pictures from the Livley Protest

These are some pictures from the Lively Protest. We took these pictures in our Lively Protester Room.

The Claret School in Quezon, Phillipines join the protest to Ask Google to Save Lively

This is a shout out to the amazing students at the Claret School in Quezon in the  Philippines who have joined the protest. See their avatars and thoughts on lively on their wiki. They have done a great job!!!

Some of the best quotes:

I am Daniel Medalla from 2-STM
(cant put a picture of my lively character.........)
Lively is important beacuse some of us teenagers bond in that site.
Please support this website....
It's a cool site.......^^
TNX....

 Hi I am Ervin Paul Angelo Gatchalian from 2-SIL
I want to extend lively 1stly because it helps children around the world not to be addict
in violent games in computer and helps children to learn how they can interact with someone
they don't know. I hope lively will not only extend but be permanent site.

Hi I'm Matthew Narciso from 2-ssm and I wish to speak about lively and hope that they can extend the limit of lively to our computers and to our friends as well.
I hope for the whole wide world to know about lively and help in saving lively from complete obliteration. I wish for all of you to know that lively is not just a normal chat room, its a place weere we can be one. For lively has placed a part in our lives by uniting everybody around us and to make us one in our relations and many more. We hope for you to understand that lively will be one of the best visual websites in the world to me.

What I Think About Closing Down Lively...

I think lots of people who use google will rebel and be sad because the site is so creative and advanced in technology. Indeed i have seen this in action thanks to this site :http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com/. I hope and pray that the digiteam dreamteam will be able to make lively stay. Pls check the site to truly understand what I mean.

Hi!!! My name is Jan Crisides C. Corrado of II-STM.
This is my avatar from Lively.com.
I gave him new clothes, and a new look.
Now, let me talk to you about the shut down of Lively. Lively is a great way for us to interact, communicate and have fun all at the same time. So now I'm talking to anyone who reads this and has a Lively account, got to Lively right now and protest against the shut down of Lively.

 They've made a great wiki.  Google isn't listening, we're pretty sure.  But if more students join in and tell Google that lively is GREAT for education - then it will be apparent that they are missing out.  Please join us.

1. Create a lively avatar.
2. Blog it, share it, comment it, tweet it, write about it!!! Speak out about how Lively can be used in education and ask others to do the same.  Share why Google should reconsider.
   
3. Sign the google lively petition -- come on sign the petition!!!!
4. Share what you think are alternatives and why 3d worlds are useful in education.
5. Write a letter to Google.  To do this, write your letter and post it on the Google Lively Help forum or also simulpost it publicly on your blog as well.
   

 The students have many plans.  If you have a protest, please send us an email to digiteen@gmail.com and we'll post your information here.  We want as many students and teachers as possible to share their viewpoints.

Today's Video and audio from the Google Lively Protest

This is the video recording of the protest (you'll need to forward about 5 minutes to when the protest begins.)  AT the end the students speak out and share their message about the benefits of Google Lively and virtual worlds and fielded some great questions from the ustream.



The protest audio file is available here. 

Come to our virtual protest in Lively - STARTING NOW

This post is scheduled to appear at 2:10 pm on the day of our protest. To join us, come to our Lively protest room which looks like the Googleplex in Mountain View.

http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-2849071083291311649&pli=1

We LOVE Google but we want them to keep Lively alive!!

Letter from a college professor about Lively

I, Mrs. Vicki Davis (the teacher), got this letter from a professor. After testing multiple virtual worlds, I too agree that Lively is the best alternative, or I would have taken the kids somewhere else.

She writes:

Noooooo! They can't kill Lively! I've investigated quite a number of Virtual World options for something that would work for both students and faculty (easy to learn, PG-13 setting, not too commercialized, accessible and customizable even at a zero-pay option, etc), and Lively was the only one to meet all of my criteria.

I had planned to do a Faculty Development workshop on Lively later in the Spring 2009 semester (March or April, two training workshops, each for about 25 faculty). I hope Google will consider holding out for a few more months -- we have a very creative faculty group, and I'm sure they'd find amazing ways to incorporate a truly friendly virtual environment into their teaching.

Please keep me posted!
-Dr. Mary McGlasson, Economics Faculty
Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Chandler, AZ

Thanks for the letter Dr. McGlasson. If you have a lively story in education, please email it to digiteen@gmail.com. Thanks!

Ready to share our thoughts: Take a look at how a virtual protest looks

From the teacher of the Digiteen Dream Team

I've listened to the protest recording and they are ready. They have made some mega innovations.

1) We've made a recording and will actually run the protest twice so we can let as many people as possible view it -- it is an audio recording that will stream in the room starting at 2:10 and then after we've run the 20 minute set of speeches, etc. that the kids have recorded -- we'll run it again.

So, the sound will stream into the room and you'll hear their words.

2) Their avatars will also speak the words at the same time that the words are played so it will really look like a protest.

At least this is how we hope it goes.

The protest is held at the Google Plex Mountain view room and the students have customized it in many ways.

3) We have a song that will debut (the chorus of it) and the band has already set up their instruments and practiced.

We've learned so many more things about Lively and I really wish they would reconsider make it a think.com like environment as Oracle has done with their product. I'm getting emails from people who have evaluated many worlds and really were getting ready to use Lively in their classroom -- six months is not enough of a cycle to give educators time to adopt something!!!

Google is getting rid of a potential money maker from the education sector
OH, Google, you're making a big mistake not using lively as a product for educators. If you charged schools $20 a month to make content and have rooms and had 2,000 teachers - that would be $40,000 a month -- and there are so many other ways you could make money as well (as the students have already shared.)

So, check back here at 2:10 -- the first 20 people (15 of which are us) will get in the room and the next 100 will be able to observe. We will run it twice. Please don't go in the room before 2:10 to give us time to set up.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Twenty 9th Graders from Georgia Take On Google
• Is it wrong to let students try? Is empowering kids the WRONG thing to do?
• In Google We Trusted and Now Our Project's Busted
• What happens when Google kills your student project: The death of Google Lively

Come to our virtual protest in Lively

We're hosting a protest in lively on 12/10/2008 from 2:15 pm - 3:00 pm to talk about why we think Lively is a great tool for education and how we've used it.

Lively Protest Room
The first 20 people in the room will be us, after that, the next 100 people may observe through lively by clicking on the links that will appear on this page tomorrow. It may take a moment to load, but be patient.

We've create a blog post that will go "live" 10 minutes before the protest starts tomorrow that includes links to the room. So, join us tomorrow and we'll share the reasons that we think lively is very useful to education and our thoughts on 3D worlds in education. (We may also have the debut of our new song we composed about the situation as well.)