FDASM Introduction

Since this discussion has come up about how the FDA might regulate conversation within social media, I’ve been talking about it to everyone who stands still briefly. Basically, I think this is IMPORTANT.

So when I was asked to talk about FDASM in Second Life to an international group of health care consumers, educators and advocates, I said, “When? This weekend?”

There was a great discussion there, which will take me a little time to pull together, so that will come in a few days, I hope.

I figured anything I put together for them would be useful for other groups as well, so put the slides in Slideshare and here, thinking they might be useful for background in preparing for our campus forum on the FDASM the last week of January. More info on that coming soon, but in the meantime, here are the slides.

National Educational Technology Plan Second Life Public Forum Final Report

The National Educational Technology Plan event was held on November 5th from 9-11pm Eastern Time, with approximately 200 attendees across the 4 main sims, 2 overflow sims, and the livestreamed webcast. The audience included participants from across the USA as well as an international audience, with some event volunteers coming from Canada, England, Australia. One of the most active participants was an American educator working in Israel who stayed up until sunrise local time to be part of the event.

The final report is posted here:
http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/national-educational-technology-plan-netp-2009-second-life-public-forum-final-report

The livestream is archived on the web here: http://tinyurl.com/netp09/

The Flickr group is here: http://flickr.com/group/netp09/

The chatlog is here:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATBUwgZWTTZ6ZGM0ZmYyYnFfMTkzY2duZDZxZHA&hl=en

There is another video of highlights by Draxtor Despres still in development.

The event succeeded in achieving both of our two primary goals:
– for the Second Life educational community to provide useful and relevant input for the Obama edtech team; and
– to highlight the potential of Second Life for education as well as for “rapid prototyping” of this type of large scale social event.

Along with the positive feedback from the event attendees, the event resulted in new professors adopting Second Life for teaching and great feedback from the the Obama team representative. Feedback from various members of the Obama team included:
* “That was great!,”
* “What a wonderful experience,”
* “The ideas I heard during the event are already influencing my thinking!,”
* “A terrific contribution to the input process.”
Last but not least, the final report from the Second Life event has been requested for use on the public website for the NETP project:

National Educational Technology Plan: https://edtechfuture.org/

Event sponsors and support came from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Metanomics, New Media Consortium (NMC), Virtual Ability (VAI), Cedar Island and the Justice League Unlimited (JLU). The contributions of the many volunteers and participants are what went beyond making this event possible to making it SHINE! Bravo, bravo to you all!

If anyone wasn’t able to get a copy of the souvenir tshirts from the event (I <3 EdTech), I'd wager we could probably make those available somewhere. If anyone makes the tshirts in real life, I want one.

National Educational Technology Plan Public Forum in Second Life

Very briefly, we just completed the event that has been keeping me so busy the past couple weeks. I’ll say more over the next few days, but for right now, just a tiny pointer to more info.

There was an awful lot of excitement that Barry from the national team actually came into Second Life, listened and conversed with the audience for the whole thing (over 2 hours). Here is a picture of Barry.

We will be archiving chatlogs and other content at SimTeach. Expect this will appear over a few days or weeks.

The Flickr group is started. If you were there, please add your images of the event.

Second Life – National Educational Technology Plan Event: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1283817@N23/

There will be a variety of videos that will become available. Miraculously, the first one IS already available! I can’t embed it here, but I can sure point you to it. Enjoy!

http://tinyurl.com/netp09/

June 27 National Health Care Day of Service Projects (Second Life)

Background information about the Day of Service.

MyBarackObama: National Health Care Day of Service: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hcserviceattend

Serve.Gov: http://www.serve.gov/

Additional information about today’s National Day of Healthcare Service events in Second Life from Siri Vita, the Second Life event coordinator.

===================

This summer, Organizing for America will fight to ensure Americans receive much-needed health care reform in 2009. Community service is a critical piece of our health care campaign. National DOS events are taking place all over the US in RL on June 27th 2009. Organizing for America – SL is organizing the effort in SL.

These health care service projects give volunteers a chance to make an impact in their own communities and improve the lives of their neighbors in the short term while we simultaneously fight for long term, systemic health care reform

To stay informed on Day of Service events please join the Organizing for America Group.

Please contact Siri Vita via notecard inworld if you can spend a little time on Saturday June 27th helping any of these amazing organizations.

Current events planned for Saturday June 27th include Pixel to Pixel (P2P), Virtual Ability Island, Hospice Development, SLHealthy, and Opportunity for America.

(1)
Service Opportunities with Pixel to Pixel
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Artropolis/38/56/52

Pixel To Pixel Foundation (P2P) was established by Jadyn Firehawk in 2009 to enhance the Second Life experience for people living with disabilities.

Second Life is a lifeline to many people who live with disabilities. Some (for example, those who suffer from clinical depression) live in isolation from others in their daily lives, and SL keeps them connected with others in the outside world. Others may have physically disabling conditions, and SL allows them the virtual thrill of full mobility, and even gives them wings to fly.

P2P, which exists only in SL, helps give direct financial assistance in the form of linden-dollar stipends to people with disabilities who currently do not have a paying job in real life and who are supporting themselves solely on disability assistance program benefits. Givers (donors) are matched up directly with recipients by the foundation, and giving is done directly – hence the name, Pixel To Pixel (as in, avatar to avatar). The amount of the stipend is $500 lindens a week, which is equivalent to only about US$2 in real life.

P2P is currently seeking volunteers to design and begin implementation of an outreach campaign within SL for both recipients and donors. Volunteers who would like to participate in a brainstorming session and start to flesh out a plan will meet on P2P’s foundation office on June 27th. Translators are also needed to translate their existing communications.

(2)
Service Opportunities with Virtual Ability Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/127/127/22

What VAI needs from DoS in SL

THE BIG CATEGORY- Publicity

**stories about SL and Virtual Ability placed in the newsletters/journals of the major national disability groups in US (listed on our website but will have to find editor and contact info. We will give some bullet points for them to write from.)

I would like to match the story writers with people from our group who subscribe to those magazines who would tell their stories about SL as part of the magazine article.

**mini biographies of our group members for posting on our website (see above- seek co-writer with each group member)

**content to put into social media- can be reworked from our website

**collect “how to” information about different forms of assistive technology and how they’re used in SL (interviewing one or several members using the same AT)

**create “outfits” for people with disabilities, either by selecting from among existing clothing and relabeling it properly, or by creating new clothing

ANOTHER BIG CATEGORY- services to members

**check links in the resources page of our website (boring but necessary)

**check links in materials at Healthinfo Island

**makeovers for members (always popular for self-esteem)

** hour-long classes on the topics of our Advanced Tutorials

**creating other Advanced Tutorials (the volunteers will need to understand that we don’t really mean advanced, just more advanced than really basic- for instance we need on on building that will explain only how to rez and what the edit menus mean in general, not all the fancy stuff)

**need a little slide show of the different materials available on Healthinfo Island together with a bit of recorded narration (I believe Daisyblue Hefferman has the script for that narration)- this all goes in a kiosk at the Welcome Center there

**participate in a project to label SL objects so blind users will be able to know what’s in their surroundings (this is done using a HUD, and it is quite appropriate for several people to be describing the same objects)

OUR MEMBERS NEED OPPORTUNITIES TO VOLUNTEER

**Do any health care providers or policy makers want to participate as listeners in a topical focus group? Our members are happy to speak out.

(3)
Service Opportunities for Hospice Development

Kaznats Oh is an SL Builder and owner/operator of a hospice in RL and SL. Utilizing vw’s to facilitate meetings with relatives and friends is an important component of Kaz’s hospice work. Since LL TOS do not allow children in SL, there is an effort underway to develop a private grid on Open Sim. Grid space has been offered. The vision for this project is a comprehensive health care area with a portion of the grid dedicated to hospice care. Kaz is looking for synergies with other health care related groups that would like to explore expansion to this new grid.

The administration of this project is key to it’s success. As such a full time administrator will be sought. Grant funding will be needed and volunteers are needed to explore grant opportunities online during the Day of Service. Also, content can be created in SL and opened on Open Sim. Volunteers who are interested in donating time on the day of service to create builds for the hospice would be most welcome.

(4)
Service Opportunities for Opportunity for America

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cedar%20Island/36/163/22

Organizing for America Group membership and participation

As part of the ongoing effort to provide accurate information and a forum for discussion and debate on the Health Care Reform currently being developed in Congress, Organizing for America will be holding weekly hour long meetings at the Nosotr@s cafe on Cedar Island. The first meeting of the OFA in SL group will be on June 27th 2009 as part of the National Day of Service.

We welcome your voices and your participation. These meetings will continue as the bill develops and this is an opportunity for you to actively participate in policy debate. Learn how you can make a difference.

OFA will also be providing opportunities to discuss a myriad of issues facing our nation. Please join the group to stay posted on upcoming events.

(5)
SLHealthy
http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/

SLHealthy is a community of volunteers who collect information about health locations, communities, and events in Second Life, then make the information available to the public and easily discoverable through the SLHealthy wiki.

How can you help?

LEVEL ONE – Individual Contributions
1) Join the wiki, and ask to become a writer.
2) Check your groups to make sure the health groups are listed.
3) Check for groups on health topics that you care about, and make those are listed.
4) Check information in the wiki to make sure it is accurate and current.
5) List health events in the Calendar.
6) Add pictures and articles and other information to enrich what is available.
7) Have another idea for how to make it better? Make a suggestion!

LEVEL TWO – Projects

a)
It would be wonderful if SLHealthy could be converted to a database driven website. This would require a project team, server space, programming skills, archiving, and possibly funding for a domain (unless it could be integrated with the existing site).

b)
It would be even better if the SLHealthy content could be queried and searchable or displayable within Second Life itself.

For more information, contact:
Perplexity Peccable

========

Selected other blogposts

Lane’s List: http://laneslist.blogspot.com/2009/06/national-health-care-day-of-service.html

Causecast: http://www.causecast.org/news_items/8654-national-health-care-day-of-service-this-saturday-june-27

Related

Helen Keller Day:
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-270433
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/education/blog/2009/06/17/beautiful-visions-beyond-sight-guide-dogs-and-helen-keller-day-in-second-life
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=44622

National HIV Testing Day: http://www.hhs.gov/aidsawarenessdays/days/testing/index.html

Max, the (Second Life) Guide Dog

Guide dogs? Second Life? Wait a minute. Isn’t Second Life a video game? No, not a game, a 3d virtual world? How does that work if you need a guide dog? It can’t work, can it?

Actually, yes, it can. I won’t say that Second Life works perfectly for persons with visual impairments, but change is in the wind. Linden Labs is working with people at Virtual Ability and Virtual Health Hands and Wheelies to make changes in the Second Life browser to allow the 3d equivalent of ALT tags and LONGDESC in the 3D virtual world. Charles Mountain has done some amazing coding to create a guidedog (named Max) that can sense these tags or descriptions and allow people to use them to navigate. Max also helps people follow someone who knows where they are going or find a specific object that is named. This is all very exciting. I will spend some time in future blogposts going into more detail about this.

In the meantime, you can take a look at these notes from a presentation about Max earlier this year, or you can this week explore the Vision Quest creatively designed by Jenaia Morane for Virtual Helping Hands and start to learn a little bit more on a personal level about what Second Life is like for persons with visual disabilities. Follow the VisionQuest and you can “adopt” Max for your own Second Life as well (Max and other assistive devices are available as freebies during the VisionQuest).

VisionQuest

SLHealthy: Max the Guidedog

More VisionQuest information available here.
http://www.tvwsp.com/questing/visionquests.html

More VisionQuest pictures available here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosefirerising/sets/72157620063829531/

Video: Who, Why, and How We Serve

I am delighted with the short highlights video version of my presentation for the MLGSCA group in March in Cerritos California.. The complete talk will be put on the Health Sciences Libraries website fairly soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy these excerpts.

The talk focused on a vision of collaborative librarianship, based out of the history of the profession and extending through potential applications of new and social media.

What I Did On My Winter “Break”

Obama, Obama, Obama ….

Did anyone else get involved with local community meetings for the Obama-Biden Healthcare Transition Team? Oh, you didn’t hear about them? When I tell folks what I did for the past couple weeks, I hear from a lot of folks who weren’t aware of Daschle reaching out to the American people for thoughts on how to improve healthcare in the United States.

Join the Discussion: Former Sen. Daschle responds on health care: http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/join_the_discussion_daschles_healthcare_response/

This initial discussion in early December was a provocative and interesting event itself. Daschle answered questions about many leading healthcare policy concern, the video was made widely available online, and public discussion ensued.

After about 3500 comments, they started to analyze the discussion (after five thousand or so, they closed comments). One of the tools used was Wordle, which distilled out the 100 top words used in the conversation. Notice the biggest one? Insurance. I don’t think that is a surprise to anyone, but I am surprised by some of the words I don’t see present — access, transportation, information, choice, rural, seniors or elderly, and much more. Some words are present, but a lot smaller than I expected — children, change, available, service/services, free, etc. Oops – etc was present in the Wordle as a word, which sort of skews the results — this would have been more useful with a filter to exclude generic words like etc, enough, done, going, getting, and such.

Top 100 Words in Healthcare Discussion (from Wordle): http://change.gov/page/-/images/wc_healthcare_full.PNG

Well, the upshot of all this was that on December 5th, Daschle put out a call for USA citizens to partake in the discussion through small group discussion events hosted in your local community. These were all to take place between December 15th and December 31st. Personally, this put a big hole in my so-called “break”, but it was important to happen and important to partake when possible. I just wish the timing had been a little different.

Daschle asks Americans to help reform health care: http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/daschle_asks_americans_to_help_reform_health_care/

Most of these took place in people’s homes. Most of the events I heard about happened through personal networks – sort of work of mouth from friend to friend. They were not necessarily open to the general public or to walk-in visitors. As a single parent of a special needs kid (you’ve heard this before if you read this blog often), getting out and about town is hard for me. Basically, not likely to happen. I don’t think I was invited to any of the events in people’s home. Some of my friends were, but they had so many obligations relative to the holiday season that they did not participate. I was thrilled to hear about first one, and then later two more events that were happening through social media.
The first event was for the autism community and was held via Twitter.

This wasn’t the only event for the autism community – there was another on Staten Island and in Virginia (see comments), and probably more I didn’t find out about. The Twitter one was organized through Causecast, a sort of a social network for “registered 501(c)(3) non-profit” organizations. But I couldn’t go to Virginia or New York, and wouldn’t have even if the events have been open nationally. In theory, I could have sponsored an event locally in Southeastern Michigan, and probably could have gotten some folks to come. Still, there are a lot of people on the spectrum who are not very comfortable in social situations and who would either have felt excluded by the venue or found it stressful to participate in real life. Having an event online made it possible to include a broader range of participants, with some interesting discussions that happened specifically about the geography of access to care for autism treatment. This type of discussion would have been unlikely or impossible in a face-to-face event. You can read more about the Autism & Healthcare Reform Twitter Day in another blog post.

Autism & Healthcare Reform – The Twitter Event for the Obama-Biden Transition Team: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/etechlib/archives/2009/01/autism_healthca.html

Because the organizer of the autism event (@TannersDad) describes himself as a “paper and pencil” kind of guy, and because after several nudges no one else volunteered, and because I believed it was important, I ended up being kind of behind the scenes tech support to try to archive the tweets for the event (with help from @ajturner). I finished up everything for them on January 2nd.

In between, there were two more events, both in Second Life. The first one was held on December 29th in Port Spinoza, coordinated by Siri Vita (one of my neighbors in SL), and was an open general meeting about healthcare reform without a specific target audience. The event was held primarily in voice (audio over the internet within Second Life) and was videotaped. There is actaully going to be a really wonderful video of the event for the Obama Transition Team, which I will share when it becomes available.

For that event, I helped out by offering voice-to-chat transcription in order to make the even more accessible to people with disabilities, and Cotton Thorne (another neighbor) did the reverse — read chat comments into the voice record for the event. This made it possible for people with a blend of sensory abilities to be able to attend as full participants and still have a complete record of the event. To make it even more fun, there were a lot of Justice League members who attended. After all, they work hard to help keep life smooth for people, both in fiction and in Second Life, and like all good hearted people are well aware of the importance of health and healthcare in making a good life possible. (My son was really excited to see the Green Lantern there, who shared with us that he has heard there will be a live-action Green Lantern movie coming out in the next 3 years.) They were back in for the final closeup shots for the video on Sunday for a couple hours, just for color, with the original event having lasted well over two hours. I was glad the Sunday event was in the afternoon, since the first SL Obama event was timed for the West Coast crowd, making it after 1am before I was able to go to bed.

The final event in which I participated was specifically for the large community of people with disabilities in Second Life and occurred on December 31st in the evening. The structure of the event was very different – they had small groups at several different tables, with a group of coordinators and facilitators — they had a greeter, a couple guides, a facilitator at each table, and a timekeeper who clocked the discussion questions and kept the various groups on task and on target.

The facilitator at my table old us she was deaf, and that this was why we needed to converse in chat (typing). My arms were still sore from all the typing the other night, which maybe slowed me down a bit. This was the first time for me that I was able to participate as a participant instead of as organizational help and background support.

I can honestly say I learned a lot from participating in all three events, and cannot imagine how the information from a nationwide clustering of these types of events will pull together for the transition team. Talk about an embarrassment of riches! I will be reporting out in future blogposts about some of my thoughts and observations from being part of these events. One of the biggest take-home points for me is what I’ve said about both accessibility and healthcare for years — there is NO one-size-fits-all.

Welcome to Virtual Abilities: Assistive Tech Meets 3d Virtual Worlds

This past weekend, I was able to attend the grand opening of Virtual Abilities, Inc. (VAI).

Virtual Abilities Inc. is an organization that is currently based in Second Life, offering information, assistance and community information, community and assistance to and about special needs and abilities. This includes information about assistive technologies and their use in accessing virtual worlds in general and Second Life in particular, as well as best practices in designing spaces and activities in Virtual Worlds to maximize universal access, accessible design, and inclusive welcoming attitude and environment.
That is my understanding, but let me quote a few lines from Gentle Heron’s speech during the opening.
[13:34] Gentle Heron:
“Yesterday a reporter asked me a question I had not been asked yet about this island. “Why are you doing this?â€? After explaining that it wasn’t me personally, but instead a whole community of people working together toward a common goal, I had to think on my feet, because that was not a question I had prepared an answer for. I thought first of the research that underlies the big picture here. A recent survey of 2,700 people with disabilities who play casual games online (meaning Second Life, not WoW) shows that about 20% of these gamers have a physical, mental or developmental disability, compared to about 15% of the American population, according to our latest census. Playing was stress relief for 81%, 69% cited mood lifting as a benefit, and 66% said gaming distracted them from disability-related issues such as pain. Compared to all casual gamers worldwide, those with disabilities play more frequently, for more hours per week, and for longer times per session. SL really isn’t a game for our target population. The data backs this up.”
My understanding is that the full chatlog will be posted later at Healthinfo Island blog, one of the VAI partners.
http://healthinfoisland.blogspot.com/2008/08/virtual-ability-island-grand-opening.html
Here are more images of the Grand Opening event.
Flickr: SL Virtual Abilities Inc.: http://www.flickr.com/groups/virtualabilities
Here is a video of highlights from the event.

Learning Machinima – Public Health in Second Life, the Video

I have for some months been observing Anne Perorazio explore and develop skills as a machinima artist and videographer. Initially Anne thought this was going to be easier than it ended up being. A year ago I had partnered with the School of Dentistry to make a machinima video about science in Second Life. I had taken all the machinima clips, recorded the voiceover (without a script), delivered these to the producer and videographer for final editing, and we had a final product in just about exactly three days from when we agreed to do it. That made it look easy, but it isn’t really as easy any more.
A huge part of what made it easier for me was working with the team, with Sharon Grayden as producer making all the hard decisions, and especially having access to Dan Bruell, a very experienced video editor. It also made it easier that, at that time, that the Second Life browser on the Macintosh supported recording video without needing an external application. That is no longer true, and while the command remains available in the browser it does nothing but cause a crash.
Anne was faced with a very different set of technological challenges and had available very different resources. She negotiated for Camtasia, and a new computer; took classes on video capture and video editing; explored locations in Second Life as possibilities for the shoots; worked with Gillian as a producer to come up with a specific plan for the purpose and message of the video. When the script was agreed upon, Anne also did the voiceover and edited that into the video edit. Much of this required doing things over, and over, and over as part of the learning curve. Gillian provided oversight, coherence, vision, and functioned as a producer for the project.
Personally, I am enormously impressed with the production quality of the final effort as well as the elegance with which the content was selected and quilted together into a coherent whole with a very worthwhile message. Bravo to both Anne and Gillian!
MBlog: UM HSL: Second Life and Public Health Video: http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/hsl/archives/2008/08/second_life_and.html
Click here to view the high quality Quicktime video version in a browser window.
Alternatively, you can watch the low resolution version from YouTube below.

Slidecasts: Second Life How To Do for Teachers and Others

A slidecast is like a podcast except that both slides and audio are embedded in a web page. We are trying to offer some of our podcasts in both forms — the version for the iPod or MP4 device and another version for the website. I hope to soon do a podcast / slidescast on how to make slidecasts. Meanwhile, check out these three — Why Second Life, Getting Started in SL, & SL Teacher’s Toolkit — and see how you like this as a way to deliver content easily to a wide audience via the web.
Why Work & Teach in Second Life
Podcast:
http://www.dent.umich.edu/informatics/bootcamp/bootcamp_archive_07.html
Slidecast:

| View | Upload your own

Getting Started in Second Life
Podcast:
http://www.dent.umich.edu/informatics/bootcamp/bootcamp_archive_07.html
Slidecast:

| View | Upload your own

Second Life Teacher’s Toolkit
Podcast:
www.dent.umich.edu/informatics/bootcamp/
Slidecast:

| View | Upload your own