As mentioned a while back, I am contributing a book chapter on health and virtual worlds and am in the middle of the writing frenzy to achieve that. One of the many authors I’ll be citing is Maged N. Kamel Boulos from the University of Plymouth in the UK. He’s recently released a great presentation on networked social media (of which virtual worlds are one component) and its utility in learning, teaching and research. Do take the time to have a look for yourself:
Metaverse Health
Addiction, research, health in a virtual world
Stories from the Vault
Therapy via machinima
Although not directly health-related, I was struck by the power of the machinima below ( thanks to Mal Burns for the heads-up). It’s produced by Lainy Voom and you can read more about it here. Have a look for yourself then read on below for some further thoughts: Fall (Mini Project 3) from Lainy Voom [...]
DREAMS event and Telehealth article
Two snippets I’ve run across this week: 1. An interesting Second Life event: The annual DREAMS Community Health, Education and Art Fair will be held from February the 15th through the 28th. This will be the 5th year for the fair at Dreams. Each year the Dreams Community Fair is provided as an outreach program [...]
Virtual worlds: public health opportunities
I spent some time today reading some fascinating (offline) information about the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and later on stumbled across an interesting article by Robert Bloomfield on the recent H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak. The take home message: If you look at it this way, epidemics provide something of a ‘perfect storm’ for virtual worlds. They [...]
Body image and virtual worlds
In the past week, the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research released its second issue, and one article that caught my eye from a health viewpoint is a research paper titled: Ugly Duckling by Day, Super Model by Night: The Influence of Body Image on the Use of Virtual Worlds The intent of the study was [...]
‘Rogues Gallery’ health event in Second Life
There’s a small but growing group in Second Life called Healthcare Education. The group was founded by the University of Michigan’s Patricia Anderson (SL: Perplexity Peccable) and a seminar series has been organised for the 26th September at 7.00am SL time (Midnight on the 26th AET). The event will be held on Health EduIsland and [...]
HIV/AIDS: collaboration opportunity in Second Life
We’ve covered Karuna previously for their work with World AIDS Day 2008. They’ve now made an open invitation to “HIV/AIDS groups, activists, health professionals, organizations, and educators” to get further involved in collaboration. If you’re interested: Place: Karuna campfire Date: March 6, 2009 Time: 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Second Life Time (Pacific Time) Thanks [...]
Medico-legal aspects of virtual worlds and health
The Economist has an interesting article on the use of Second Life in training people around virtual consent. It’s an area where a virtual world has strengths (the ability to recreate a real-world situation) without some of the downfalls (lack of clinical complexity due to technological limitations). Another aspect that has struck me over the [...]
Therapy in Second Life
The usually tabloid Second Life Herald have an interesting but short interview with a Dutch hypnotherapist who conducts therapy in Second Life. Of course, there’s nothing new about therapy in Second Life – our sister site The Metaverse Journal interviewed two counsellors back in March 2007 – you can read that interview here. If you [...]
Virtual worlds for the elderly and disabled
An Italian virtual worlds developer, ISN, has announced the roll-out of the Oasis Foundation Virtual World Project. Funded by a non-profit organisation in Italy devoted to assisting the elderly and disabled, the project aims to: 1. Act as communication and collaboration environment to inform, communicate and interact with the public in an innovative way. 2. [...]
Counselling, online therapy and virtual worlds
It’s coming up to a year since we interviewed DeeAnna Nagel and Kate Anthony and discussed counselling in online environments broadly and in virtual environments more specifically. Over that time, the Online Therapy Institute has continued to grow. One example of this is the announcement of a five-hour course on online supervision. Anyone who works [...]
Robots as simulation tools: great summary of progress
Today I stumbled across this great bunch of photos on the National Geographic site, showing a range of advanced robotics projects underway (some of which I’ve covered here before, including the one pictured). Have a look through them all and you can see some of the superb simulation opportunities these robots will provide. Would love [...]
Counsellor Education in Second Life
John Wilson has done an interesting interview with Edina Renfro-Michel from Montclair State University. The topic is the education of counsellors, and the outcome has been improved learning outcomes from students who took part in the Second Life than those who didn’t. As Edina mentioned in the interview, the virtual worlds aspect improved overall knowledge [...]