KidGab and Digital Parties

Stephanie Valentine has been a busy bee during Summer 2015.

Her Digital Friendship program expanded to three Girl Scout summer camps and will be hosting hundreds of new accounts. As daunting as the additions to KidGab are, Valentine was up for the challenge. Despite any obstacles that arose, Valentine was excited to expand Digital Friendship and help more people by introducing them to her nonprofit, Wired Youth, which was founded with the help of Dr. Tracy Hammond, the director of the Sketch Recognition Lab.

To kick off the summer, Valentine hosted a digital party via her social media site for children, KidGab. Celebrating with her in person was Jung-In Koh, Katya Borgos-Rodriguez, Angelica McMurty, and Dr. Hammond. Invitations were sent to every girl scout that already had an account set up to join in the party and chat with each other while taking new quizzes and exploring new additions to the site as they were made in real time.

(Stephanie Valentine and Katya Borgos-Rodriguez updating KidGab with new add-ons)

Before she set out to obtain as many digital badges (the achievement trophies of KidGab) at the virtual event, Dr. Hammond had to change her avatar’s clothes.

“We can’t have the same outfit at a party,” she joked about her avatar’s likeness to Valentine’s.

As soon as everyone’s avatars were dressed for the party, the fun started once again. New drawings and statuses were posted in exuberant numbers – so much so that Valentine had to change the settings to show the last one thousand posts made by everyone, instead of the previous 50.

Watching everyone creating sketches to come to life for various prompts was like spectating multiple games of Pictionary simultaneously. New creations and expressions were digitally born and shared with a community of friends.

(Stephanie Valentine creating an account for Jung-In Koh)

While everyone mainly worked independently of one another, the party laughed and grew together. The gathering served as a way not only to critique KidGab, but also as practice for adding people to the system.

Soon after the date of the digital party, Valentine and her summer assistants began the expansion of the Digital Friendship program to three new Girl Scout summer camps.

"Seeing and hearing a bunch of kids scream and be excited about the program was one of my favorite parts of the summer," Borgos-Rodriguez later stated as she worked on updated looks and new illustrations for KidGab.

Through the chaos of adding over a hundred new accounts over the span of a few summer months, the KidGab crew stayed positive and hosted more digital parties for KidGab participants everywhere to come together virtually to celebrate the new gifts that awaited them online.