Sounds bazaar

I am featured on a podcast this month which is hosted by one of the busiest men in e-learning: Graham Attwell. It's called Sounds of the Bazaar and it looks like it's been going for a while, because this is edition number 14. The podcast lasts approximately one hour and is reminiscent of a vox pop radio show. My interview is about 7 minutes long, and is one I did with Graham about the University of Plymouth's Sexual Health SIM in Second Life while we were at the ICL conference in Austria last month. You can even hear the coffee machines in the background...

There are some interesting features from other speakers on this podcast, including interviews with Stephen Downes and Ruth Rominger and reports from conferences. Graham does a good job as host of the show, and draws you into the content with his easy going, westcountry burr. Have a listen - the entire contents are also featured on the British Institute BILD site. Graham and I will also be speaking on a specialist panel called 'No Life in Second Life?' at Online Educa Berlin next month. With us will be Dai Griffiths, David White, Helen Keegan and Steven Warburton. Hope you can make it...

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.

Island SLife

My colleague Maged Kamel Boulos and I were interviewed today by a reporter from Associated Press, about our collaborative research programme (with Susan Toth-Cohen, of Thomas Jefferson University, USA) in Second Life. Readers of this blog will know It's a sexual health SIM which provides regularly updated information, particularly for young people, on safe sex, contraception and pregnancy. There is also a Big Quiz open for anyone to take. A complete list is available of all the educational institutions (SIM Teach) currently operating in Second Life - SL won't get overcrowded though, because Linden Labs will simply build more islands, Dubai style!

One of the things the AP reporter will (hopefully) investigate is the excellent video tour (I can say this because I didn't help to make it) of our SIM on Education UK Island. You can find it on YouTube, but it's easier to get it here. Hope you can take a few minutes to watch it and then post your comments.

Second Life and sex

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”.

You can check out all the latest news on the Sexual Health SIM blog, which is updated almost every day.