These recent postings all reflect a less than rosy current picture of SL……

Andy Powell Loses Faith

Fuzzy Buzz on why Linden Lab needs to read Snow Crash again

Zonja Capalini on Openspace

Editorial: Virtual conferences in Second Life

The early summer 2009 Virtual World Watch snapshot of virtual world activity in UK HE and FE (sponsored by Eduserv) is now available to view……..

View Report

Virtual World Watch

A way of helping the mentally impaired to give informed medical consent in Second Life (a part of Imperial College’s virtual postgraduate medical school in SciLands)….

View Economist Story

Source : SLHealth List

Our paper (written with Mark Shufflebottom) presented at Serious Games on the move 2008, was recently selected for publication in the January 2009 issue of Networks (published by INSPIRE, Anglia Ruskin University’s Centre for Learning and Teaching).

The project, a collaboration between the School of Heath and Social Care and NHS South West, was one of three HSC e-learning initiatives granted funding during 2007. Mark worked with myself and Ruth Lewis from the HSC Clinical Skills team to create a web-based virtual simulation of an infection control scenario.

View Networks Issue 12

A Consolarium project involving Professor Layton and the Curious Village on Nintendo DS supporting learning in a school in the Orkney Islands (lets hope they’re doing better on it than I am at the moment !) …..

View Link

Thoughts on the power of machinima and some ideas around machinima as a therapeutic tool….

Metaverse Health Link

A Second Life for eHealth: Prospects for the Use of 3-D Virtual Worlds in Clinical Psychology”

Sony’s new online virtual world, PlayStation Home, is behind the times, says a leading Microsoft executive……….

Daily Telegraph Article

I finally got my chance to have a roam around Home on the Sony PS3 last Friday after receiving my Beta invite and graphically it looks a million times better and sharper than Second Life which for simulation and health might be important in the longer term/bigger picture. Characters are easy to customise and quick to process (comparing the pc to the ps3) and movement is very fluid even when there are lots of people moving around – it’s also funny to be in a virtual world where there are lots of people around rather than moving through the eerie deserted plains of Second Life.

If Sony ever decides to enter the education arena in some way with a privately cordoned off section it might be onto a winner. If it leaves it as an entertainment development for ps3 fanboys then at least for researchers looking at how virtual worlds might be implemented and function on a large scale it will provide a huge range of data. The beta forum already has some very interesting posts for possible papers………

Home Forum

The Serious Virtual Worlds report focuses on virtual worlds for educational uses, and explores the ‘serious’ – as opposed to leisure-based – uses of virtual worlds…….

View Report

Recently seen out and about in the shops….

My Health Coach: Stop Smoking brings Allen Carr’s method to Nintendo DS. Developed in conjunction with Allen Carr’s experts, the game hopes to make users understand all the illusions about smoking that prevent them from quitting through powerful facts brought by experts and fun games……

Ubisoft Site

Time to coin a catchy title for these sorts of developments – what I am now going to call M-Learning For Health (ML4H)