To me, the news of Google pulling the plug on Lively came way too soon. Sure, Lively didn’t set the virtual world on fire, but there were some great ideas in there. It seems like it was also starting to catch on with Educators. And now they are pulling the plug? How many other dead Google products are still in development?
A group called the Digiteen Dream Team is staging a protest to see if they can keep Lively afloat. The really interesting thing about this team is who they are:
We are ninth grade students at Westwood Schools in Camilla and started this blog to speak out about the fact that Google Lively is shutting down.
Yep – not a bunch of geeky old people like us EduGeek moaning the death of some obscure tool that we never actually use – 9th grade students. But that is not all – they also blog about “Encouraging Corporate Digital Citizenship, Sharing How We Think Virtual Worlds Can be Used in Schools, and Creation of a Digital World to Teach Digital Citizenship to Students.” Wow. Even if you can’t make their protest (or don’t care about Lively that much – even though you should), at least check out their blog and read their thoughts on several virtual worlds – fascinating stuff.
Matt is currently an Instructional Designer II at Orbis Education and a Part-Time Instructor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Previously he worked as a Learning Innovation Researcher with the UT Arlington LINK Research Lab. His work focuses on learning theory, Heutagogy, and learner agency. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas, a Master of Education in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville, and a Bachelors of Science in Education from Baylor University. His research interests include instructional design, learning pathways, sociocultural theory, heutagogy, virtual reality, and open networked learning. He has a background in instructional design and teaching at both the secondary and university levels and has been an active blogger and conference presenter. He also enjoys networking and collaborative efforts involving faculty, students, administration, and anyone involved in the education process.
Thank you so much for sharing this. The students have designed T-shirts – http://www.lively.com/catalog/search?scoring=e&xa=-1&q=digiteen&xc=0 that you can wear to support the protest.
I’m very proud of the students and although it doesn’t look good on Google’s side of things, I wish they would reconsider. All we can do is talk about it and share it and your sharing this helps so much! Thank you!
I was there in spirit – Lively told me the room capacity was full. It was fun to watch – interesting to see how students get involved in stuff like this. Also kind of shoots down the whole “creepy treehouses” theory (that I never fully agreed with).
Thank you for trying to come to our protest. I was one of the students who was in the room at the time of the protest. I think shutting lively down this soon will be like trying something new, then after two months you quit it. Google doesn’t know the capacity of lively’s abilities. Lively can be used in so many ways. Here at westwood in Camilla, Georgia we used lively to teach seventh graders about the nine aspects of digital citizenship. If lively were to shut down, it would ruin our project. If google doesn’t want lively, they can just let it go open source and let it be it’s own program. This is what most of us here in Georgia want. We need more people to support us, so please, give us all the help you can. Thank you.