Second Life sexual health seminar takes flight

Our University of Plymouth Second Life project is going from strength to strength. This week we held our first live seminar on sexual health, entitled 'Broken Wing, Learning to Fly', which was a great success. Around 20 avatars were present at some point during the hour long event, and the average was 14. This is the first of a series of seminars we will be holding in the near future, all designed to raise the awareness of young people about contraception, safe sex and sexually transmitted diseases. The full report including several snapshots taken during the event is available on the project blog now.

If you haven't visited our Second Life project on Education UK island yet, please do - we think you will find it a breath of fresh air... Let us know what you think by taking the special quiz/survey on the site.

Virtual condoms anyone?

We're getting more and more visitors to our Second Life SIM on sexual health, and my colleague Maged Boulos (our resident medic) is doing an excellent job publicising the educational opportunities our little patch of Education Island UK is offering, through our SIM blog. I paid another visit myself yesterday to our site, and yes, there really is a free condom dispenser in the corner of our reception area! (Maged thinks of everything!). On the blog today, he's evaluating the differences between 2-D and 3-D web and posing some interesting questions.



I also took a train ride whilst I was there - go and have a look if you don't believe me - it's an old steam engine, gives you a tour of the entire island and you can visit several well established university sites and other educational outlets including the Universities of Derby and Hull, and Learn Direct. Hop on and off where there is a station and explore...

Our SIM is shaping up to be a very useful 3-D virtual area to raise awareness of contraception, unwanted pregnancy, STDs and other issues that seriously affect the lives of young people. Our mix of open air auditorium and closed space information centre, including a teleport to a private sky-box consultation area, will hopefully make a positive contribution to sexual health. Oh, and the picture above is my own avatar seen visiting the site - he's called Loudli Singh, and he doesn't take up half as much space as I do...