Education in Second Life

I have toured around to many universities in Second Life, the list is long.  Business, engineering, library, science, IT,  legal, and distance learning departments are just a few who are taking advantage of the Second Life platform.  The islands are being used for recruiting, training, teaching, lecturing, testing, and I have even talked in on meetings between professor and student in a virtual office of a professor, complete with credentials and family photos framed on the office wall.  One school of business even offers retail space for students to create an SL business using information they have learned in their courses.

Loyalist College in Ontario Canada is reporting that their testing scores have increased by 28% because of training and testing they are doing in SL for a border crossing patrol program they have.

Today an article was posted on the SL Blog by George Linden about yet another University entering Second Life.  The National Autonomous University of Mexico is the largest university in Latin America, with the Engineering School alone having 11 K students.  UNAM is currently building their campus in SL for Engineering School Distance Education Programs and also connecting with companies in the Real World to help take engineering design and training to the next level.

The island opens May 1st  SLURL (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ingenieria%20UNAM/212/128/23) 

Upcoming Changes for Adult Content in Second Life

Second Life has always been an open environment where residents can explore and participate in a wide variety of activities.  This has created a rather large amount of content inworld that makes Second Life an amazing creative virtual world.  Along with this creativity has come a vast amount of "adult" and "fetish" content and activities.

Over the next few months, Linden Labs will be implementing some changes around Adult content to give all residents more control of how they manage their content.  They plan to create an environment where everyone can have control over their own personal preferences.

Their goal is to improve Second Life for everyone.

During the next few weeks Linden Labs will be seeing input from many segments of the SL community.  It will be interesting to see what is defined as "Adult".  It will also be interesting to see how they will verify age, will it only be according to credit card verification?  Many children have access to their parents card numbers.

The Helix Island and several other private islands are listed as PG sims.

Dr. Cindy Gordon - CIO Peer Forum

April 24th, Dr Cindy Gordon aka Sydni Lane in Second Life, will be speaking at the CIO Peer Forum in Toronto.  Her speech will be broadcast live in Second Life at the Helix Virtual Worlds Innovation Center http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bountiful/204/114/26

Nokia Island

I spent time today with Digistar Brouwer, manager of the Nokia Island.  Nokia has created some fun aps for inworld cell phones.  For several months I have been using a Nokia N95 phone that has a poofer that sends out blah blah blah, busy, and BRB.  It's a fun way to let other avatars in Second Life know that your avatar is busy.  The latest Nokia phone has a Twitter ap,  you can now send out your tweets while you are in Second Life.  

For some time now companies like Vodafone and Nokia have been using SL to have their communities send SMS messages to Real Live celll phones from SL.  I am anxiously awaiting the next virtual cell phone application that Nokia creates.

The N96 smart phone supports Second Life along with smart phones from Sony, Samsung, Ericcsson, Motorola and LG.  Second Life can now be run on more than 70 3G enabled handsets.

Science and Innovation in Virtual Worlds

One of my favorite islands in Second Life is the Tech Museum of Innovation, based in San Jose, CA.  After visiting the island several times in SL, I decided to use it as an example of innovation in my many virtual world presentations.  While teaching a workshop at KM World in San Jose last September, I was able to visit the Tech Museum in Real Life.  I was there a couple of days before the Leonardo exhibit was to open.  I was very impressed with the Second Life (Virtual Worlds) display that they have created.  I love the movement activity where you can stand, make motions and watch your avatar make the same motions.  The Millennials are the first generation to grow in virtual worlds, this exhibit is a great hands on environment for children of all ages to learn.

Helix Virtual Worlds Canadian Second Life Developer

Helix Virtual Worlds is a division of Helix Commerce.  We specialize in developing and building island experiences in Second Life, we are a full service consultancy with several web 2.0 experts on board.  We have a full team of designers and developers in Second Life to build, script and create your virtual world experience.

We have just finished our innovation center for hosting conference and will be opening it soon to the public.  You can search in Second Life under Helix or Innovation.

Helix is located in Toronto, Ontario Canada

Kaline Hax - Second Life Avatar

Kathryn Gibson

647 477 6254

April Fools Announcement - Second Life Behind Company Firewalls in Alpha Testing

April 1, 2009 Linden Labs announced  that their stand-alone version of Second Life solutions is available in alpha phase.  IBM, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), New Media Consortium (NMC), Intel, and Northrop Gramman are all currently using this install.

This is a server solution that is completely independent of the main Second Life environment.

It's now in alpha phase with plans for a limited closed beta phase in the summer and general availability later this year. 

This is good news for those companies who like the 3D advantages of a virtual world experience but have concerns about the content that abides on Second Life.  Training sessions, client interactions, knowledge transfer and conferences can all be conducted behind a company firewall.

Looking forward to seeing more as the in the box, corporate solution for behind company firewalls becomes available. 

Hopefully this isn't a bad April fools joke.