One of the biggest highlights of WebPlay Local has to be The Secret Meeting, where partner classes get to meet in person in a drama-workshop with Jet Set and Go’s Top Agents! This Spring’s Secret Meetings were full of surprises. We were lucky enough to get some feedback from a special observer we had visiting from the US:
“As I returned from watching a “Secret Meeting” of two schools who are doing WebPlay Local, I was struck by how human the people playing around in these short pockets of schooltime get to be. Grown-ups act silly and do things like stand on their heads and dance in unison. Children meeting each other in person—for the first time after having communicated online—match up shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-knee, and hand-to-hand, giggling all along. There is a real sense of optimism in the room and it is of the sort that Jonathan Zittrain describes in his TED talk: the Web is a random act of kindness. In this July 2009 talk, Harvard professor Zittrain describes how the Internet is made possible by many people who do what they care about without expecting payment or praise. He gives many examples of cases in which people stood ready to help others with a problem. He expresses his optimism that using the Internet can provide us with ethical moments in which we decide what to do with the human emotion conveyed through it. According to Zittrain, acts of kindness are evident all throughout the Web. This is certainly what I see in the WebPlay Local Secret Meetings.”
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