Sims to Teen Second Life: Transition of the SimSavvy Girls to Tech Savvy Isle

In its second year, the Tech Savvy Girls Project adopted "Teen Second Life" as a platform for interest-driven learning and designed projects and objects around themes important to them and their futures as technology-using, creative people. By using the building tools in an open-ended virtual world, they were able to pursue interests common to teen-aged girls: art, houses, fashion, social connections, and future careers as entrepreneurs while developing a wide range of IT-related skills. These skills extend far beyond the limits of traditional school's definitions of computer technology as either mastery of particular software packages or computer programming. The participants, through informal "tinkering" activities have developed life-long meta-skills and identities as technology users, which will allow them to continue learning new techniques as computers, computer programs, and information technology continue to change well into the future. (Contains 3 figures.)