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...
We are just over one week into our new project after being given a free land grant in Second Life. My co-investigators Maged Boulos (University of Plymouth, UK) and Susan Toth-Cohen (Thomas Jefferson University, USA) have been busy developing the Sexual Health Education site on Education Island. While I have been away in Greece they have made some impressive progress. So far the site consists of an open air arena (unlike here in England, there is no bad weather in SL unless you create it yourself), an information kiosk, a private counselling sky-box, an information obelisk and a variety of news board systems to inform visitors about upcoming events such as lectures and the like. There is also a Big Quiz game for all to try and maybe win a prize!
We also have a new collaborator: ChaCha Biedermann has agreed to join our project and build a new interactive AIDS/HIV/STD information kiosk on our land. She has many exciting low-prim plans and ideas, including making the kiosk read content aloud using pre-recorded voice files. You can also find ChaCha’s Second Life group for supporting HIV-positives in-world, if you search for Groups and type in “AIDS”. Her group is named “AIDS and HIV HELP”.
