Skip to main content

Home/ Second Life/ Group items matching "my" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Eloise Pasteur

Second Life offers healing, therapeutic options for users - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

healing second life support therapy

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08 - Cached
  • poured out my heart from a place of loneliness and grief. Click click went the computer keys, like the staccato beat of my heart. Clack clack went their replies, their empathy and their own tales of triumph and woe. Via my avatar - the persona I'd created to engage here - I was participating in an "anxiety support group" in the free, virtual world of Second Life.
  • 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."
  • No wonder analysts at Gartner, a leading technology research company, predict that three years from now 8 in 10 Internet users will work or play in virtual spaces.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • 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."
  • As I write those words, I can hear the scoffing. Pathetic! Escapist! Are you addicted to computer games? Do you have no friends? Second Life? That place is just about weird sex fantasies!
  • "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.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08
     
    Personal anecdote of seeking support in Second Life. It is written by a journalist and addresses a lot of the issues from several sides - including advice from various mental health practitioners and comments from volunteers as well as some real insight into the world of SL and relating it to the public.
anonymous

IPLobster.com - IP Address | My IP | IP Check | Find IP Address | Whats My IP | IP Lookup - 0 views

iplobster.com/

address articles check computer dns domain find finder geolocation ip ipv4 ipv6 is lookup memory my myip operation search system trace what whatismyip

shared by anonymous on 16 Sep 07 - Cached
  • anonymous on 16 Sep 07
     
    IP Address , My IP , IP , Find IP Address , Whats My IP , IP Lookup , IPv4 Address , IPv6 Address , DNS Address , IP Whois , IP Locate , IP Trace , Show My IP Address , What Is My IP Address , MyIP , Resources , Networks , Directory , What's My IP , Find An IP Address , IP Adres , IP Adresse , IP Adresse
Eloise Pasteur

Second Stindberg: One year Babel Translations - growing of a virtual business - 0 views

stindberg.blogspot.com/...l-translations-growing-of.html

business model second life service translation work

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 12 Jul 08 - Cached
  • By that time I was primarily offering English/German at a price of 2 L$ / word, but soon requests for other languages came. I recruited French and Italian translators, soon Danish and Swedish followed. I charged 3 L$ for those languages, but kept English/German for a long time at the lower level as I was making these translations myself. In August 2007 I acquired my first reference customer. Blaze Columbia of Blaze Fashions not only insisted on paying the double rate, she also gave me some valuable business tips, like implementing a minimum fee for jobs. Back then I was in awe of what I considered "large" amounts of money, so I did not follow her advice of establishing 500 L$ as minimum fee, but instead chose 250 L$. I was reluctant to mention this limit to the first clients, but none of them objected. So up to date 250 L$ stayed the minimum amount for translation jobs.
  • In January I took my associate Tina Lynch aboard. Not only did she work on French translations, but she also replaced my notecard-based bookkeeping with a sophisticated spreadsheet based on Google docs. Under her lead we refined the spreadsheet over the next month, and now it is an invaluable tool of keeping track of jobs, degree of completion, distribution of jobs among translators and calculating revenues and fees.
  • In May, Babel Translation took over the competing agency "2nd Tongue Translation". For a couple of months we have silently cooperated already, granting 2nd Tongue a bulk buying rate for the languages they did not offer themselves. As 2nd Tongue's manager had to reduce her SL involvement, Babel Translations stepped in and integrated 2nd Tongue's business into our own.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Today, Babel Translations is the premiere translation and copywriting/text creation agency in SL. With a 3-figure number of jobs and a 6-figure amount of translation fees in recent months, our 50 translators provide the finest and most professional translation services in SL. We cover almost 20 languages, and each language is at least covered by 2, typically 5 translators. The translators themselves are in most cases RL translators, or have a similar qualification in language teaching, journalism or other text creation parts.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 12 Jul 08
     
    Description of setting up and running a translation service in SL including a range of tips for the budding SL entrepreneur
Eloise Pasteur

MediaShift . Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On | PBS - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...t-virtual-life-goes-on050.html

Second Life journalism Reuters CNN PBS review

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 20 Feb 09 - Cached
  • How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario, as I detailed in a previous post on MediaShift. Some journalists simply tired of SL, as so many people tried it and then bailed because of its steep learning curve and high technological requirements. But the journalists that have been more enmeshed within the world have been rewarded with plenty of cultural and sociological (and yes, business) stories.
  • John Lester leads customer market development for education and health care for Linden Lab, which runs Second Life. I met him in-world and had an instant-messaging chat with his alter-ego, Pathfinder Linden, about how the media has covered SL over the years. My SL name was Lynx Wickentower: Lynx: Did media miss the bigger story of Second Life? Pathfinder Linden at the educational meeting in SL Pathfinder: That seems to be a typical pattern for the human species, yes? We did it with all the previous mediums. We'll do it again in the future. We always misunderstand new mediums, initially treating them like pre-existing ones (e.g., treating the web like print media; treating television like radio). But then we learn new ways of seeing the tools and new ways to leverage them.
  • As for Reuters' coverage of SL, they did better than most journalists who did drive-by stories with a day or two of research in-world. The bureau lived for more than two years. Still, James Wagner Au, who writes the excellent New World Notes blog about SL said they could have done better. "Their writers, Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel, are fine journalists, and did some great external business-oriented reports, but at the same time, I don't think they were ever passionately engaged in the medium or Second Life's community on an experiential level," Au told me. "Consequently, their reporting very much had a distanced, 'outside looking in' flavor that caused them to often miss the big picture, in my opinion."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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."
  • Eloise Pasteur on 20 Feb 09
     
    Balanced article about the impact of journalism on SL and SL on journalism.
Eloise Pasteur

Gwyn's Home » Not So Lively: Chronicles of Day One on Google's Virtual World - 0 views

gwynethllewelyn.net/...y-one-on-googles-virtual-world

analysis comment gwyneth llewlyn lively second life

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08 - Cached
  • (no new virtual world supports the Mac these days, in spite of the “promises” done to “support it soon” — with “only” 8% of market share and growing, the Mac is simply not interesting for developers to focus on)
    • Eloise Pasteur
      Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
       
      Not true, Small Worlds does
  • Being — like all Google products! — a Beta version, there are perhaps 40 or 50 available options (not the “millions” announced by Google reps) and they can be somewhat configured, but the choices are confusing and very, very limited.
  • “Linden Lab” room a close second. Figuring out that here I would already find a few familiar faces from Second Life®, I went for that one. The choice was certainly correct — Dusan Writer, Grace McDunnough, Jurin Juran, and likely a few others (sometimes it’s not easy to figure out who’s who!) were around in the room, testing the cumbersome interface. And cumbersome it is!
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • 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
  • Eloise Pasteur on 09 Jul 08
     
    More on Lively. Google is missing the mark
Eloise Pasteur

Second Life™ text-to-chat software: E.V.A. - Eloise's thoughts and fancies - 0 views

eloisepasteur.net/...index.php

accessibility blog life second text-to-voice

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 31 Aug 08 - Cached
  • What Louise has done is work on a guide dog and a white stick that use sensors to detect the surroundings and say in text what is around you. You can pick up your own copy at Wheelies.
  • EVA: Essential Voicechat Advancement. This is, in effect, a plug-in for Windows that reads the chat log and reads it out via the system's text-to-voice system.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 31 Aug 08
     
    My blog entry about Louise Later and the guide dog/white stick for the blind in SL, and EVA that does text to voice on a windows machine.
Eloise Pasteur

Second Life interface redesign - Eloise's thoughts and fancies - 0 views

eloisepasteur.net/...index.php

design interface life second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 25 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Eloise Pasteur on 25 Jul 08
     
    My thoughts on redesigning the SL interface. Just for fun really.
Ole C Brudvik

NMC Campus Observer - 0 views

sl.nmc.org

secondlife teaching

shared by Ole C Brudvik on 22 Apr 07 - Cached
  • One of my challenges with talking about SL to colleagues is in explaining its value in terms of the traditional work environment - it seems like most of the online meetings and conferences I attend in SL are “about SL” - do you know what I mean - it can be elusive. smoke and mirror stuff. One interesting thing about people’s conceptions of what is possible in sl - is that sl can be used as some magic pill that will transform the structure of community/learning/teaching…. I think that’s interesting as my experience of SL so far is that it can accentuate RL experiences and emotions. Most students I kow are stressed about school - so why add more stress in a virtual environ! This is our challenge - how to make the experiences new…
Ole C Brudvik

Colony: Colony: Blogs - 0 views

www.sloodle.com/...index.php

bloghud education mashup secondlife sloodle

shared by Ole C Brudvik on 21 Apr 07 - Cached
  • [SLED] Grad Colony - Demo Sloodle Web interfaceParticipantsBlogs Page:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  (Next)Add a new entryBlog from the top of the libraryby Grant Potter - Friday, 20 April 2007, 11:40 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: SJSU SLIS Hello again. Live from the top of the San Jose Library...by Grant Potter - Friday, 20 April 2007, 11:06 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: SJSU SLIS Sitting on the edge of the prim... Top of the world!by Grant Potter - Friday, 20 April 2007, 10:46 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: SJSU SLIS Sitting on a prim on the top of the library. Blog Post #1 - Posting from SLby Grant Potter - Friday, 20 April 2007, 10:44 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: SJSU SLIS Here I am on top of the San Jose Library sitting on a prim. Posting with the 2 in 1 Toolbar...very handy!by Grant Potter - Thursday, 19 April 2007, 10:26 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: Campus I dropped the HUD to the ground and resized it. I put it back in my inventory and attached it to the center of my HUD. Works (and looks) great now that is it larger. Testingby Kip Yellowjacket - Monday, 16 April 2007, 08:28 AM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: Hyperborea asfdjasldjlasjdlajsdlasldjasldjlasdjlaösjdlöasjdlas Greetings from Sloodlevilleby Clark Shah-Nelson - Thursday, 29 March 2007, 07:14 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: Hyperborea Testing the Sloodle Toolbar from Hyperborea, 56, 179, 22 Sloodleville! 12 Sloodle Toolbars have been served. I can't quite figure out what to do with the Sloodle Box... Clark Sakai signing out. Blog 2by Clark Shah-Nelson - Thursday, 29 March 2007, 07:08 PM Anyone on this sitePosted from Second Life: Hyperborea
    • Ole C Brudvik
      Ole C Brudvik on 21 Apr 07
       
      This is example of blogging with the avatar inside secondlife to the course blog on the web (sloodle).
Dr. Fridemar Pache

Trailfire Frequently Asked Questions - 0 views

trailfire.com/faq.php

diigo help test trailfire

shared by Dr. Fridemar Pache on 11 May 07 - Cached
  • How do I add a mark to a trail? Create a new mark and give it the name of an existing trail, and it will automatically be added to the end of the trail.
  • How do I create a trail? Create two marks with the same trail name, and they'll automatically be linked together.
  • Who can see my trails? When you first get install the browser extension trails you create will be visible to all users.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • and you can add them to groups or give them the ability to edit some of your trails.
  • To get the URL for a trail
  • You can also find trail and mark URLs on the Trail Summary page
  • trail-or-mark-URL
  • URL-of-the-trackback-blog
  • MySpace just use the trail or mark URL as the link value
  • "My Stuff" page
  • source mode of the WYSIWYG editor
  • Why use
  • Dr. Fridemar Pache on 11 May 07
     
    Let's test, how Diigo and TrailFire can work together. This is a test, wether a highligted sticky note with marks from Trailfire shows the mark, i.e. the Trailfire annotation too. Before that, I tested the converse.


  • Dr. Fridemar Pache on 11 May 07
     
    The correct link is probably this one.
  • Dr. Fridemar Pache on 11 May 07
     
    This phrase is ambivalent to me. Are there really mark URLs, in addition to trail URLs?


Eloise Pasteur

Autoplay System upgraded - Eloise's thoughts and fancies - 0 views

eloisepasteur.net/...index.php

Second Life products blog screen presentation

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 01 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The autoplay system that I produce has just been upgraded in the light of some feedback. To the existing system I have added two features: Access control - determine who can touch the player and start it running. It defaults to all, but can be set to group only or owner only Pause controls - you can either pause indefinitely or for a fixed time. Either pause can be overridden by an authorised person touching the display
  • Because the old system is copy, no transfer I can only upgrade if you catch me online at a convenient time (i.e. not when I'm teaching or otherwise occupied) and I can come and see your system. Once I've seen that, I will happily replace it with the new system. If you want to buy this new, it is for sale in all the usual places (in my picks), and via XStreetSL and Apez - you can find links at my products index page.
Kerry J

Instructor Career Course Outline - 0 views

docs.google.com/View

vwbpe SL SecondLife second-life virtualworlds education

shared by Kerry J on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Kerry J on 30 Mar 09
     
    Catherine Dutton, Instructional Coordinator, Instructional Support Services, Texas Woman's University This was a fantastic session that covered a topic near and dear to my heart - how to arm educators with the skills they need to get started in virtual worlds. Catherine shared what she learned from a course she helped to develop for her university. Developed October 2007 - Last session completed November 2008
Eloise Pasteur

Serendipitous Sex - Eloise's thoughts and fancies - 0 views

eloisepasteur.net/...index.php

Second Life sex adult invention creativity

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • My contention is simple - when we're in Second Life to work, we can use the same techniques we use in first life to focus on the task at hand rather than that gorgeous avatar. If we want, later, to consensually jump that avatar's virtual bones (to be deliberately somewhat crude) and they are interested too, then just like flirting in the office, we can run off together and do this. However, if we're in a space that forbids this - Lively I'm remembering you here, but not only you - there is that allure of the forbidden, the censored, the naughty. People can, and will, work around the limitations in some quite amazingly inventive ways. Knowing it's not forbidden lets us (as a group) apply that energy and creativity to the task at hand when we're working, and apply it to the avatar at hand when we're not - in much the same way we learn how to do as adults.
  • The obvious corollary to this: if we ban sex from Second Life (which isn't the same as the current proposals about the adult continent) we switch back to a situation more like Lively where the allure of the forbidden becomes stronger. Creativity, learning and the like go down, and how long would it be until Second Life follows Lively into closure?
  • There are a range of other things too. The sex market in Second Life contains a huge amount of innovation - if people want to do sex, people will find ways to let them and support them. Whilst not every tool to support avatar sex turns into a tool to support education or business in Second Life, quite a lot (not all, but quite a lot) of the tools that you find used in education and business settings in Second Life, have their origins in the sex industry. Even when they're duplicating tools that are used in RL education/business settings, the code in Second Life is often explored and refined in the sex industry in Second Life first.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So, there you have it. Second Life, in my opinion, gains from the fact that it lets the adults play as they choose as well as work as they choose. The fact there's a market for sex toys drives innovation in Second Life, and supports the business and education communities too. Although the press would, at least sometimes, have you believe it's a playground for perverts, so is the atomic world. But I do rather suspect if you remove the sex play entirely, you remove one of the things that, whilst it draws unwelcome attention, drives Second Life to be a success.
Eloise Pasteur

SL Bloggers Mix and Match - Making 'em stay - 0 views

www.brandaluna.net/...s-mix-and-match-making-em-stay

Second Life new-user-experience male

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 17 Nov 08 - Cached
  • this post is her detailed look at keeping new male residents engaged in SL
  • Right, where was I? Oh yeah, the learning curve. I’m supposed to be telling you about “The lack of encouragement for new male residents to stay in Second Life”, but since I’m, err, female — does a quick check, right, okay, definitely female — I decided to conduct an Extremely Unscientific Survey among male residents to see what they had to say. 16 male residents responded, and the general consensus is that… [drum roll] … friends are generally the greatest form of encouragement for new male residents to stay in SL. “I came and went my first year. I hung around when I finally started making some friends and started going places and doing things with them,” says Dyami Jameson.
  • “I think men in Second Life are more motivated by ‘goals’ and scoring systems, which makes SL less attractive to them than women, who are more attracted to the social aspect of the metaverse,” comments Prad Prathivi. “Guys are naturally competitive and aim to lead the pack, which is harder and less obvious to achieve in SL.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Peter Stindberg explains it this way: “Males want challenges, tasks and goals — all this is not apparent in SL. You need to find your own purpose in SL, make your own goals, find your own tasks. This makes SL less attractive compared to a kill-all-enemies-grab-all-gold type of game.” He suggests converting orientation stations into games which might offer a reward, perhaps a small amount of L$ or some sort of avatar clothing or equipment. “It’s a stereotype, but give each new male resident a fishing rod and a shotgun, fill the Linden seas with fish and the forests with deer, reward each trophy with L$1 or status points or gadgets, and the crucial first days and weeks will pass more easily,” adds Peter.
  • Male fashion blogs have blossomed, among them Winter Jefferson’s blog, In Cold Blood; Lawless McBride’s blog, Half Arsed; Takeshi Ugajin’s blog, Shop with Takeshi; Lustinian Tomsen’s blog, Second Life Male Style and Fashion; Monta Horan’s blog, Monta; and Oscar Page’s blog, Oscaresque. Of course, one can’t leave out the collaborative blogs Men’s Second Style and SL Men, and now there are even two blogs covering male-related freebies: Free Finds for Men and Free for Men.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 17 Nov 08
     
    Thoughts on keeping men in SL
Eloise Pasteur

Finding health information, community online - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

groups health second life support

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08 - Cached
  • On finding support groups in Second Life: The SLHealthy wiki (slhealthy.wetpaint.com) is probably your best and most comprehensive resource for Second Life health support groups, organizations and locations.
  • On "official" Second Life health support groups like those operated by the American Cancer Society versus groups begun by individuals who have suffered from a particular ailment: We have not reviewed the information provided by groups, though in several instances, we've decided not to list information about a group because it's clearly unethical. One example is a pro-ana (or pro-anorexia) group, and another was a for-profit "organization."
  • If you're thinking about joining a group, I suggest you use the same radar you might in the real world: Do you feel comfortable? You should feel perfectly OK about asking questions you have.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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"!
  • Eloise Pasteur on 13 Jul 08
     
    Quick overview of using support groups in Second Life with an analytical slant and a link to SfH's list of groups
James OReilly

The Second Life of Second Life - Linden Labs - Involve 3D | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...econd-life-of-second-life.html

shared by James OReilly on 28 Sep 08 - Cached
  • companies should try to spark user-to-user discussion -- a surprisingly cost-effective option on Second Life.
  • West's epiphany came about by accident. One day, she was sitting on a Second Life art-gallery couch, talking to people from all over the world, and she had their rapt attention. "At that moment, I could have sold my couchmates on anything," she says. "I realized how powerful one-on-one engagement could be."
  • hypercreative users who wanted to interact.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • "I describe the mistake companies made like this: Imagine you've never been to Manhattan. You cross the George Washington Bridge, and someone hands you a guidebook. The first place you're going is not the Reebok store."
  • She calmly explained that the previous failures of Second Life were a result of not harnessing the medium appropriately
  • The Weather Channel, Colgate, and CareerBuilder.com have figured out how to interact with Second Life's virtual denizens in ways that impact real-world attitudes.
  • Why A-list companies are returning to the virtual world.
  • a place to engage customers.
  • West has rewritten the rules of corporate marketing on Second Life.
Eloise Pasteur

Kim MacKenzie hits back on negative media coverage of Second Life : The Metaverse Journal - Australia's Virtual World News Service - 0 views

www.metaversejournal.com/...-media-coverage-of-second-life

bias economy life media second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 23 Aug 08 - Cached
  • What is it with the Australian media? Why are they focused on slandering Second Life as a failure? I have recently discussed my research findings of commercial activity within Second Life with several journalists, where only minimal quotes have been used out of their original context; in order it seems, to support an obvious negative bias.
  • This is extremely disappointing as it is not an accurate reflection of the important invaluable opportunity that Second Life has provided pioneering commercial exploration of VR capabilities.
  • Vital 3D avatar immersion lessons have been learnt, modeling and building skills developed, use of digital agents, telepresence, interactive, navigational and communication applications explored, and platform and cultural limitations realised. This is all invaluable experience for commercial frontrunners preparing to invest in a virtual future.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Fundamental lessons have been learnt, and these firms will reap the rewards by being well positioned to take informed advantage of future VR developments. And fundamental developments are essential that encompass service delivery stability, ‘in world’ governance and behaviour policing, legal and copyright protection, a shift away from ‘virtual reality is just a game’ consciousness, and mainstream user adoption.
Eloise Pasteur

The Otherland Group - Blog: Second Life at a Cross Roads? - 0 views

otherland.blogs.com/...second-life-at.html

3dinternet analysis blog future life plans second

shared by Eloise Pasteur on 31 Jul 08 - Cached
  • For many people outside of the "virtual worlds industry" the terms "virtual world" and "Second Life" are still more or less synonyms. This is especially funny, as many people in the industry seem to have written off Second Life because of many disappointing developments in 2007 and the big negative hype in the press.
  • It is not a secret, though, that Linden Lab's management and investors still believe that the Second Life technology will be the (or a least "a") corner stone of the future Web3D. Is this totally unrealistic? And would would Linden Lab have to do, to make this come true if it isn't? Making the platform more stable is a simple answer - and certainly a pre-requesite. But what about other decisions? More control? Or less? More openness? Or a tightly controlled product? And a product for which target groups? Based on what business model?
  • Both will tell you, that Linden Lab indeed has a rather profitable business model, is expecting significant growth and is targeting markets way outside the current user base (actually alienating large groups in the current user base).
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Actually - and for some of my readers maybe surprisingly - I think that Linden Lab has a strategy for the coming years and Second Life's place in the Metaverse.
  • In parallel, it is interesting to see, that Linden Lab created a "Department of Public Works" earlier this year, which is responsible for "beautifying Second Life" - after a long long time, where the company just flooded the market with more and more "land" (servers) which quickly were converted into huge trailer parks.
  • The problem for Linden Lab is, that they target so many dfferent audiences. And it is impossible, to offer all of these audiences ONE single product, a product that will make all of them happy.
  • I believe, that they are all part of a unified strategy to position Second Life as a standard tool for creating and accessing the future Web 3D as well as to position Linden Lab as one - but not the only - important service provider.
  • ut, comparing SL to "The West" (as Mitch Kapor did it in his birthday speech), please consider: not all of the important groups and personalities in the American West of the 1840s or so would be well respected citizens in the California of 2008
  • a second important audience, Linden Lab is targeting, too, is the corporate audience, the educational institutions, etc. Despite Linden Lab's propaganda, this is a very small market today (the majority of earnings comes from consumers) but it is growing. This audience needs more "control & security". If Linden Lab wants to succeed in these markets, they have to provide that - not only on seperate estates, because the vast society of Second Life CAN be an interesting aspect for some of these projects, too :) Not all of them work best in a walled garden.
  • For those who want a walled garden, I am sure, that Linden Lab will soon offer some options which go well beyond what is possible on private estates. It will be possible to host closed sub-grids in Linden Lab's data centers in 2009. I am very certain of that.
  • Linden Lab will offer one. Others will do that, too. There will be "adult grids" (they are already being built). There will be grids for many, many sub-cultures and those will certainly not have the same set of rules like Linden Labs SL has (now or then). And there will be corporate "Intraworlds", educational and marketing grids, tightly controlled and partly or fully closed off to the public.
  • Eloise Pasteur on 31 Jul 08
     
    Thoughts on the future of Second Life in the development of the 3D metaverse
1 - 20 of 26 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page