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i3D Tools at English Village Holoteaching™ Virtual holodecks enable teachers to "Holo-teach™." Holoteaching™ is a term we use to describe teaching using a holodeck. Plain and simple. We'd love to do this in the real world, but since real world technology is not yet available we are doing it in SL. Holoteaching™ provides a number of advantages for our teachers. Namely - context.  If you've ever taught a language class to a group of students, you will understand the importance of context.   For example, if a student was, say, going to Italy for a vacation, and wanted to study how to order some food - they could easily pick up a book on Italian language and memorize the necessary phases.  If however, they were actually able to do a trial run - and actually sit down IN an Italian restaurant BEFORE they went on vacation, the likelihood of a good meal would most definitely increase. This is EXACTLY what holoteaching provides - an avenue for teachers to immerse students into rich role play scenarios where the walls, floors, and ceilings are textured to match what they are learning! Talk about fun!

Holo-teaching also allows transforms our classrooms into versatile meeting spaces.  If a teacher needs to provide office hours, or meet with the president, or a college across the globe, they can easily transform their classroom into the appropriate space.  Need a meeting room? No problem, click on meeting rooms, and choose from our selection. You can't find a meeting room you like? No problem, build it yourself, and our engineers will program it into the holodeck for you!  Need a library to do research on educational technology? Load our research lab, and have the walls filled with links to real world research portals on the web!  The options are endless!

Interactive White boards English Village also makes use of several interactive white boards in Second Life. This allows our teachers to import Real World content from their PowerPoint presentations.  Once loaded, teachers can flip through each slide easily like they would in a normal class setting.  During conferences, our teachers also have the option to allow their audience, or guests to import and share their own PowerPoint slides during the meeting.

While Reuters thinks that the story has moved on from Second Life, CNN and many others beg to differ. The broadcaster now has an even larger presence in SL. Rather than send in a reporter as a corresponent in-world, CNN relies on SL residents to report their own news as citizen journalists for its iReport site. CNN.com senior producer Lila King said that Second Life iReporters have posted 376 stories since it launched a year ago, but that relatively small number did lead to a number of stories on written by CNN.com producers (including this one about relationships in-world). King Since iReport.com launched in Feb. 2008, Second Life iReporters have posted 376 stories. It's probably worth noting that "in-world" iReporters actually began sending stories when the iReport SL hub launched in November 2007, but we don't have an accurate count of stories submitted before iReport.com launched. King said that SL has been more than just a story-generating tool for CNN's iReport team; it's also helped them learn to nurture an online community. "We've started to see a new benefit of being in Second Life: it gives us a place to polish our skills in community building," King said. "Newsrooms everywhere, ours included, are trying to learn how to foster meaningful, two-way conversations with their audiences. When we hold our virtual news meetings every Tuesday afternoon (2 pm Second Life Time/5 pm ET) with the Second Life iReport community, that's exactly what we're doing: listening and interacting in real-time, offering feedback and courting new ideas along the way."

One thing that has survived the hype is the virtual economy of Second Life and other online worlds and gaming environments, where people sell virtual goods with game-based money that can be converted to real money. BusinessWeek's Hof believes that's a story that has staying power. "The notion of virtual economies is already becoming a solid business model for many game companies, and even social networks like Facebook -- by some accounts up to $2 billion in revenues -- so that seems like a trend that has some legs, and it's one you can credit Second Life with proving as much as anyone," Hof said. "And of course, the idea of user-generated content is huge today on a number of fronts, though Second Life is just one example of that."

more attention to elaborate hairdos than Cher in her heyday

It has, in short, all the trauma and pain of real life, and some cautions are in order when it comes to seeking psychological support.

But maybe because it's a dream realm, hopefulness abounds. Nowhere is that truer than in Second Life's support groups, which help people cope with everything from cancer, depression, bipolar disorder and autism, to caretaker stress. There are more than 70 such groups, according to Second Life's Health Support Coalition. Most are secular. While a few groups are facilitated by associations such as the American Cancer Society, peers run most.

As expressed on the Web site, www.supportforhealing.com, associated with Second Life's Support for Healing Island, "we are NOT and never will replace the help of professionals ... but purely hold a safe place for people to come when they need a shoulder."

A year ago, before I had explored Second Life, I would have laughed at the idea of virtual shoulders. How can a person possibly be "real" via an avatar anyway - much less have a meaningful conversation with a puppy dog, barmaid, elf, or wilder avatar appearance such as a blob or a tree? It's hard enough to trust someone in real life, much less "second life." Then again, what better place to connect our yearning selves with other yearning selves than in a space of mutual creation - a place where those very selves can be one's unconscious made manifest? Indeed, avatar, in its original Sanskrit, refers to the descent of the soul in human form. Click, clack: When I rose from my hourlong anxiety group meeting, I felt seen and heard in the deepest part of me - more so, in fact, than in some "real life" interactions, where we often put up fronts.

The anonymity of Second Life can make all the difference in opening up to share within a support group. Somewhere in small-town America, a wife and mother of about 40 - she could be your neighbor or relative - suffers from serious depression. She loves animals, so within Second Life, as Fionella Flanagan, she's a big gray dog with a shaggy white mane. She attends the depression support group. Why does she do it? "I don't have to worry about what I say in the group coming back to bite me in my home town."

She also suffers from fibromyalgia, one of those crippling, invisible diseases that some doctors say is "all in your head." In Second Life, Fionella doesn't "have to overcome real life prejudice when I say I'm sick. There's none of that, 'but you look so good' junk."

When anxiety support group avatars were asked whether they were more honest as avatars than in real life, a wild-haired blonde, Galvana Gustafson (in real life an American, dancer and bassoonist with a master's degree in psychotherapy), put it this way: "My avatar is more honest than myself because the rejection won't hurt as much."

"All of Second Life is my support group," she reported.

Morgana later discovered the Support for Healing Island "because I was going through a major relapse with my bipolar and needed help from people who understood. I personally like to be in groups that are survivors, sufferers, and caretakers and loved ones, supporting one another. The best help and advice I have ever gotten are from people who have experienced firsthand."

People with autism or Asperger's especially seem to appreciate Second Life.

Researchers of autism use Second Life as a laboratory and tool. At the in-world SL-Labs and Teaching and Research facility, at the University of Derby in England, Simon Bignell, a lecturer in psychology, studies how Second Life can "enhance first life social-communication skills in people" with autistic spectrum disorders. The Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, Dallas, offers a therapy in Second Life for people with Asperger's that helps them practice interviewing for jobs.

Second Life's Health Support Coalition (a collaboration between Soj, the avatar Gentle Heron and Carolina Keats, who in real life is a medical librarian) has won a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to create an Ability Commons, for 40-plus smaller health and support groups. "Imagine a paralyzed 23-year-old lying in his family's back bedroom," the coalition wrote, "yearning for contact with age peers in similar situations. Second Life offers people with serious physical and cognitive disabilities opportunities to socialize and get information."

opens each meeting with disclaimers: "Please do not let these meetings take the place of professional help," he typed to us.

One in-world psychologist, Dr. Craig Kerley from Georgia, who was profiled on CBS's "Early Show," has hung his shingle for "cybertherapy" at $90 per hour. This work, he says, "can be valuable for those who have limited choices in their geographical region, have limited time to drive to regular in-person appointments, have limited mobility, and have limitations in their lifestyle that make traveling to a brick and mortar office difficult."

Still, Dr. Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UC Davis and a specialist in virtual worlds, cautions about therapy in Second Life, even with professionals. He advises using it only as "a potential adjunct to face-to-face therapy," and to "use passwords or other cues in Second Life to make sure you're talking to the right person" - the real therapist, not scammers posing as one.

Yellowlees uses Second Life as a teaching tool, not for therapy. His Virtual Hallucinations sim gives "the lived experience of schizophrenia - to hear voices and see visions" so his students (and the rest of us) can "get inside the head, just a bit, of someone who's psychotic." It certainly sparked empathy in me, much more richly than a mere clinical description of the disorder would have done.

Empathy: There's that word again, an odd one to associate with impersonal bytes and modems, but the right one. Second Life is a hot, humming thing of wire and light, a "server" - spiritual teachers would like the metaphor - that can carry community and genuine human sympathy.

Siemens’ Connectivism Theory

accelerating momentum

there are some fundamental questions which remain unanswered.

it is beneficial to address while the race to adopt and implement highly engaging Web 3-D virtual worlds is watched in healthcare professional education

Therefore, Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations Theory [5] and Siemens’ Connectivism Theory [6] for today’s learners will serve as theoretical frameworks for this paper.

A 3-D virtual world, also known as a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World (MMVW), is an example of a Web 2.0/Web 3-D dynamic computer-based application.

applications that enable social publishing, such as blogs and wikis

the most popular virtual world used by the general public is Linden Lab’s Second Life (SL)

health information island

US agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health conduct meetings in SL to discuss the educational potential of SL

virtual medical universities exist all over the world

The term “avatar” is an old Sanskrit word portraying a deity which takes on a human shape

Trauma Center

Virtual worlds are currently being used as educational spaces [1] and continue to grow in popularity on campuses and businesses worldwide. Furthermore, access to versions of virtual worlds on the Web, such as “Croquet,” “Uni-Verse,” and “Multiverse” are predicted within two to three years to be mainstream in education

there are reported advantages to having students engage in these emerging technologies

By allowing students time to interact with other avatars (eg, patients, staff members, and other healthcare professionals) in a safe, simulated environment, a decrease in student anxiety, an increase in competency in learning a new skill, and encouragement to cooperate and collaborate, as well as resolve conflicts, is possible.

High quality 3-D entertainment that is freely accessible via Web browsing facilitates engagement opportunities with individuals or groups of people in an authentic manner that illustrates collective intelligence

Advanced Learning and Immersive Virtual Environment (ALIVE) at the University of Southern Queensland

Who would imagine attending medical school in a virtual world?

Problem-based learning groups enrolled in a clinical management course at Coventry University meet in SL and are employed to build learning facilities for the next semester of SL students. This management course teaches students to manage healthcare facilities and is reported to be the first healthcare-related class to use SL as a learning environment.

Another example of a medical school using SL is St. George’s Medical School in London.

Stanford University medical school

Another virtual world project developed by staff at the Imperial College in London, in collaboration with the National Physical Lab in the United Kingdom, is the Second Health Project

Mesko [35] presents the top 10 virtual medical sites in SL.

The development and use of 3-D virtual worlds in nursing education is increasing.

Some educators may balk at adopting this technology because there is a learning curve associated with the use of 3-D virtual worlds.

Let’s have fun, explore these fascinating worlds and games, and network with others while respecting diverse ways of life-long learning and current researchers’ findings.

there is an underlying push in higher education to adopt these collaborative tools and shift the paradigm from a traditional Socratic method of education to one possessing a more active and interactive nature

One may view online virtual worlds and serious gaming as a threat to the adoption and purchase of high-fidelity computerized patient-simulation mannequins that are currently purchased for healthcare-profession training. For example, nurses may login into SL and learn Advanced Cardiac Life Support at their convenience, and it costs virtually nothing for the nurse and perhaps a nominal fee for the developer.

The educational opportunity in SL may not be a replacement for the doctor- or nurse-patient interaction or relationship, but SL may serve as an adjunct or pre- or post-learning tool.

one recalls when critics questioned the validity and reliability of the stethoscope invented by Laennec in 1816 and how today it is second nature to use this assessment tool.

2006 health fair

Immersive technology won out over a variety of alternatives primarily due to low cost and the increased engagement it delivers. The leading alternatives were Web conferencing and in-person meetings, followed by phone calls.

Work-related use of the Immersive Internet is in the early adopter phase. Before it can pass into the early majority phase, practitioners and the technology vendors who serve them must “cross the chasm.” The most common barriers to adoption are target users having inadequate hardware, corporate security restrictions, and getting users interested in the technology.

A recent Jisc/Mori report indicated that Second Life remained the least popular technological pursuit among students.

As many as 76% have never, or only rarely, stepped inside a virtual world, and some students polled thought that environments such as Second Life were "sad".

"If you are an art and design student, then you have a canvass without boundaries,"

I sure understand professionals' concerns about the validity of information provided in peer health support groups, but it's important to understand that they meet anyway, with or without our support and listing. It's caveat emptor, as it is everywhere else - on the Web, in the media, it's all about questioning and evaluating health information. It may be surprising, but from my own observations of people in health support groups, the discussion does get round to whether information is valid or not, surprisingly often. I think we all are coming to realize that the goal has to be empowerment, so that the individual can be a true partner in his or her health care - informed, skeptical, involved, well-supported within the health care and personal communities.

With regard to health information from groups, I'd recommend you use what you learn as you might use information from Wikipedia: a great resource with terrific anecdotes that may help you understand more about a health condition, but not necessarily authoritative. And it might not necessarily apply to you, with your own unique health history, medications, and more. It can be a wonderful starting point and provide you with questions you can explore on your own, discuss with health care professionals and check out with a medical librarian. Someone should come up with a Latin corollary for caveat emptor that means "always ask, always learn"!

Then again, it looked like most of the crowd was complaining about the excruciatingly painful lag.

Combine that with a confusing little interface and it was clearly anything but a “fun” experience. And remember that we were all cheating. Everybody on the “Linden Lab” room at that time was a veteran Second Life resident; we’re not exactly newbies with virtual worlds. We have tried several, and in some cases, use different VWs regularly and every day. We’re used to lag, to semi-functional software, to application crashes (several people crashed during the few hours I was online), to things not loading, to silly mistakes that everybody does. We’re also used to the insanely complex (but virtually rich) interface of Second Life, and use computers and their complex applications to accomplish tasks every day. And, of course, we all are very open minded and eager to try new things out.

Lively was anything but Lively — except for the fact that you were in a visually unappealing chatroom with a lot of friends or at least acquaintances from one’s journey across the Metaverse. Like I usually say, most virtual worlds I’ve tried only capture my attention for about 15 minutes, and it’s up to the developers to make sure that I enjoy the first 15 minutes

The “cartoonish” look (which is so great for rendering things quickly) is also something that baffles me. I can’t believe that Google is targeting the teen population.

After all, Mike Elgan from ComputerWorld claims: What that means is that companies will be able to re-create their office and meeting space, and events companies can create or re-create entire conferencing facilities. Your avatar can wander around, see the “booths,” check out the conferences or interface with other “attendees” — all in virtual space.  Really, Mike?… They might do that, but definitely not on Lively.

Even a MoU representative (who, as said, did create a room for a client in Lively already) considers that opinion an “interesting hypothesis”. Put into other words, not even MoU seriously believes that article, and it’s just one of a series — which, if I didn’t know the reputation of the magazines writing them, I’d just believe they were infodumps straight out of Google’s marketing department. The claims are just ludicrous.

If Google has more plans for Lively, they’re not telling — and instead are offering a terrible product, way below their usual offerings.

So why are people so enthusiastic about Google Lively? I have only one explanation: it has the brand “Google” behind it.

As a 3D-chatroom-embedded-on-the-web, it falls behind almost every other product and application I have tried in the past 4 years, no matter where you wish to find something good. The animations are goofy and cartoonish, to the point of extreme irritability.

The interface is not obvious, but then again, SL suffers from the same problem, and it’s just a question of getting used to it.

There is no content creation at all; no way to integrate it with anything; no programming/scripting; no chat tools (even GTalk, known to have the least features just after SL’s chat system, has far more!).

And, more important: no support, a terrible forum system (I can’t answer on half the threads), no helpful people around… if you bump into a Google Developer, they’re very likely very friendly (or so everybody who met them claims), but that’s all you get.

Google’s webpage for Lively is even more minimalistic than anything else they’ve launched before

And there is nothing on the Google developers’ sites either.

Searching for the “most popular” rooms leads to the inevitable: the most rated one was a dance club (since you can stream music) and on the top ten list you had a lot of sex-related rooms as well.

This was a terrible disappointment. I admit to being very naive. I was expecting something with at least the quality of Vivaty which at least has pretty decent avatars

but using SketchUp to import at least crude models. Even importing plywood cubes would be nice! Instead, we have to rely on the “Catalog”, created by a limited group of Google developers.

Some SL residents managed to talk to the Google Developers, and these said that there was a 3D Max plugin to allow the creation of content into Lively. The plugin works 90% of the time but it can only improve. There is no idea or plan or announcement on if that plugin will be released to the public.

Google is known to be “the company that does no evil”. But looking from my point of view — an enthusiast of the 3D Social Web — I feel cheated. We were doing great in opening the minds to millions of users to look at the Metaverse as Second Life defines it as the next human-machine interface for all our tasks. Granted, we all know it’ll take ages — another decade at least — but we all are here for the long term. Instead, what we get from one of the industry giants is that “3D is bad, embedding cartoons on Web pages is good”. Why? Well, it should be obvious. Google is the market leader in (2D) web search content — both text and images (and soon video). While there is an HTML-based World-Wide Web, Google will be a major player in it — always.

I don’t think there are coincidences. In about 24 hours (not in the same day for the timezone-impaired), Sun’s Wonderland gets slashdotted, Linden Lab announces the massive growth of Second Life and demonstrates the interoperability between their main grid and IBM’s OpenSim-based grid, and Google launches their own virtual world, Lively. July 8th was definitely the Day of the Metaverse!

So, like probably billions of people around the world, I tried to join in to Lively and see what’s all about. Not to be turned down by the lack of Mac support

Videos more easily capture the look and feel of Second Life. YouTube (www.youtube.com) has a good introductory overview video of Second Life (search “Second Life Text100”) as well as a video that illustrates its communication, education and collaboration possibilities (search “Second Life Ohio University”).

In a recent interview for National Public Radio Weekend Edition (www.npr.org, Feb. 9, 08), Bloomfield described the basics of the Second Life economy and the real financial losses from the recent Second Life banking crisis. (The currency used for economic transactions in Second Life is called Linden Dollars. Linden Dollars can be exchanged for real U.S. dollars at a rate of approximately 260-to-1. Last year, Linden Lab banned online gambling operations that had become popular in Second Life. Early this year, Linden Lab banned unregulated banking operations in Second Life because several banks were reneging on unsustainable high interest rates on deposits.) Bloomfield attributes his initial interest in Second Life to its potential use as an economic simulator in which reactions to new financial regulations could be studied by FASB.

Professor Steven Hornik, of the University of Central Florida, is another accounting professor exploring accounting education applications. He created a Second Life location called Really Engaging Accounting and maintains a blog about his efforts at www.mydebitcredit.com. In his financial accounting course, he uses the social networking capabilities of Second Life and interactive 3-D objects that he creates. The objects demonstrate basic accounting principles. One simulates the effect of transactions on the basic accounting equation. Another simulates the use of T-accounts to record changes to account balances. Students use their avatars to manipulate the models. Videos of his Second Life creations are available on YouTube (search “second life accounting”).

SUMMARY Second Life is an immersive and engaging 3-D virtual world with economic implications and opportunities for the real world. CPA Island is the current center of the public accounting profession in Second Life, but this won’t be the case for long as other CPA firms choose to use it as a tool for meeting, connecting, sharing and collaborating with others. Where business activity goes, it seems certain that CPAs will follow.