First safety-conscious (or fun-hating, depending on your perspective) school administrators banned dodgeball.

Next in their sights is tag, according to a story in USA Today, “‘Not it!’ More schools ban games at recess“.

Banning playground games like tag, however, may hold serious consequences for children’s social development:

Critics of the bans say playing freely helps kids learn to negotiate rules and resolve disputes. “They learn to change and to problem-solve,” says Rhonda Clements, an education professor at Manhattanville College.

(Thanks to the alert reader who sent me this.)

One of the best of the new conflict resolution blogs that have emerged this year is ICT for Peacebuilding, a blog based in Sri Lanka “exploring the use of technology for conflict transformation”.

Dispute resolution professionals eager to gain a glimpse into the future of the conflict resolution movement will want to follow this cutting-edge blog, particularly those seeking a global perspective.

Its author, Sanjana Hattotuwa, shares with his readers news of an extraordinary project: dropping knowledge, an international initiative for social change using the medium of the web to bring people around the globe together for what may be the world’s largest public conversation about important issues. From the dropping knowledge overview:

dropping knowledge is a global initiative to turn apathy into activity. By hosting an open conversation on the most pressing issues of our times, we will foster a worldwide exchange of viewpoints, ideas and people-powered solutions. However knowledge is defined, by dropping it freely to others, we all gain wisdom…

dropping knowledge is a way of asking and answering questions that respects other viewpoints and leads to a meaningful exchange. When you ask in order to understand, when you answer in order to share, you are already practicing dropping knowledge.

The dropping knowledge project includes a Table of Free Voices scheduled on September 9, 2006, in Berlin, for what will be a gathering of “scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, artists and activists from around the world…, renowned for their lasting creative, social or humanistic contribution” who will respond to 100 questions from the global public.

You can post your own question for these experts to answer or find other ways to support this large-scale public conversation project by visiting the dropping knowledge web site.

Recently I reported that a pair of peer mediation educators were using Second Life, a multiplayer online game and virtual world which allows for player interaction, as a way to create a supportive, safe learning environment for high school students mastering mediation skills to role play together.

Here’s another example of the power of virtual worlds to transform social interactions: in “Get a Second Life Now“, communication expert Neville Hobson describes attending a meeting on avatar-based marketing organized by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

What was remarkable about this meeting is that it was convened not in a real-world conference center but instead took place in a virtual meeting space in Second Life.

Read Hobson’s post for this remarkable description of a meeting mediated entirely through digital technology.

The implications of this are exciting–imagine attending a conference where colleagues gather from around the globe, all without the cost and inconvenience of air travel, car rentals, and hotels (and just think, you’ll never have to worry about losing your luggage).

Social scientists, hoping to explore the uncharted terrain of human behavior in cyberspace, are mapping online interactions by studying blogs, according to “Human Trails In Cyberspace“, an article in this week’s edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education (although it doesn’t right now, this article may soon require a subscription to access).

Among the researchers are Lada Adamic, an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, who created a map of ties among political bloggers, and Matthew Hurst, director of science and innovation for Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a company that helps businesses track and analyze trends in consumer-generated media (i.e., blogs, online forums, and newsgroups).

You can download the article Adamic co-authored, “Expressing Social Relationships on the Blog through Links and Comments” (in PDF), on her web site. To see Hurst’s project, visit his blog, Data Mining, for more information and to see his visual representations of the complex strands of connection among blogs.