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Microsoft's Virtual Worlds research platform, a software development kit for
building distributed multi-user environments (Virtual Worlds Group).
There is a growing amount of work on virtual worlds (Turkle 1995). How-
ever, while most of the research looks at how community develops as such,
Zora looks at how personal identity develops in the context of a community.
The research is aimed at helping young people understand and affect the ways
in which identity and values are constructed in the real world, as well as on-
line. In the same spirit as other constructionist virtual communities such as the
text-based MOOSE Crossing (Bruckman 1994) and the 2D Pet Park (De Bonte
1996), kids can program behaviors for their own creations. But in Zora, pro-
gramming is limited to storytelling behaviors. For example, they can describe
the underlying turn-taking rules between user and character as well as define
the stories to be told in response to certain input. Like in the psychological
novel, the engine of action is placed in the richness of the created characters and
the resulting interactions rather than in the plot. As in Kaleidostories, users can
create a collaborative values dictionary. But in Zora not only can they define its
values but also put them to test through their actions in the community.
Kids designing their own virtual cities
I conducted two pilot studies in which young people used Zora: an intensive
summer camp held at the Media Lab with a multicultural group of teenagers,
and a five-month study with young patients in the Dialysis Unit at Boston
Children's Hospital.
Despite their diversity in background and context, I chose these popu-
lations because both share a need and desire to explore identity issues. The
first study explored how Zora could help young people from diverse cultural
backgrounds to explore their identity while developing a sense of personal and
moral values (Bers 2001). The second study focused on feasibility and safety of
using the Zora virtual environment with young patients facing hemodialysis in
a hospital setting. This includes the analysis of Zora's impact on children's un-
derstanding of their illness, and its potential to facilitate mutual patient support
and interaction (Bers et al. 2001).
In both studies, participants built and inhabited a virtual city with per-
sonal homes and public spaces. For example, the summer camp participants
built the Salsa and Merengue temple and the French Chateaux, while the dial-
ysis patients built the Temple of Feeling Better and the Renal Rap room (see
Figure 4).
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