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room, and the Dinosaur hall, and two community centers, the City hall and the Junk
shop. Participants created an average of two temples and one personal home per per-
son, with the exception of one of the kids working at home who created 10 virtual
places but did not finish any of them. The Zora virtual homes evolved and dynami-
cally changed as participant's developed different ways of understanding their
identity through interactions with others community members. For example, the
objects created by users became “tangible” representations of the multiple aspects
of their identities. The use of storytelling helped kids to think about the personal
and moral values associated with the self. (Bers, 2001).
During the last day of the workshop, every participant left a legacy with advice
for future Zora users in the entrance to the city. Legacies were grouped into three
categories. Those giving advice about technical issues, about how to design expres-
sive artifacts and places, and about how to handle social issues in the community.
For example, participants shared their differing points of view about death penalty,
and then debated about the punishment they would implement in their virtual
city.
Although Zora's design based on PTD enabled the participants to explore issues
of self, Zora's design was not enough to make a successful learning experience.
Other factors also had a positive influence and shaped the way the experience was
conducted and the evaluation was made possible. These factors are organized in
terms of the eight dimensions mentioned earlier.
(1)
Curriculum
. The curriculum used in the workshop focused exclusively on a
child-centered approach to learning. This worked well because the participants
were a highly motivated and self-selected group already thinking about issues
of identity. The presence of a flexible, emergent curriculum provided Elisa, the
mentor, with guidelines for possible activities based on children's interests. This
curriculum was solely based on the possibilities for making objects and narra-
tives afforded by Zora. For example, children could create personal and public
spaces with objects and stories, values and definitions, models of identification
ad counter identification. They could also engage in discussions about the social
organization of their virtual city and the needed public spaces.
(2)
Mentoring model
. One of the goals of this work was to observe to what extent
a virtual world with design features informed by theories of identity forma-
tion and moral development, such as Zora, would engage kids in exploration of
identity and personal and moral values. Because the presence of an adult with
background knowledge about this area and who would behave as coach or guide
would bias the results, it was consciously avoided (Bers, 2001). Thus, the role
of Elisa, the mentor, was conceptualized as someone of similar age who would
work as a peer and who would also explore issues of identity and values while
participating in the workshop. This model worked well in this experience in part
because of the personality of Elisa, and in part because of the commitment of
the participants. However, if the focus of the experience were to switch from
a child-centered model of learning, such as the one taken in this case study,
