Karuna Resource Center in Second Life

This video was a test to see if Jing (http://www.jingproject.com/) would work well enough to upload short videos of my work in the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life to YouTube.

The video was kept very short to also test the posterous autopost feature while using the posterous bookmarklet on (posterous.com), which I have set to send to twitter and flickr as well (flickr videos must be under 30 sec).

My intent is to use this tool as a means of promoting newly created displays of information resources on HIV/AIDS. (I may end up creating 60 sec. videos and bypassing flickr.)

About Karuna: The National Library of Medicine awarded Alliance Library System a grant for a project entitled "AIDS Information and Outreach in the Virtual World of Second Life." The project includes the creation of a new island, called Karuna, has a community HIV/AIDS center and a library/resource center which will provide information support and outreach to the Second Life community and beyond about HIV/AIDS and its prevention.

(In Second Life I am the Karuna Consumer Health Librarian, Robin Mochi. In first life I am an academic librarian in a small private liberal arts university.)

Photo taken from inside Second Life of Real Life #SLCC2009 being streamed into Second Life live :)

 

Photo taken from inside Second Life of Real Life #SLCC2009 being streamed into Second Life live :)
I had good intentions tonight when I headed inworld to work in the Karuna Resouce Center. After a while I decided to check twitter and well, saw a tweet about live stream of Second Life Community Conference (SLCC 2009) with live music and suddenly I'm here dancing with some very nice folks rather than working in the Karuna RC. Oh well, sometimes ya just gotta take a break and have some fun. The music is surprisingly very good, good company and fun chatting while we dance. Made a couple new "friends." LOL

Update, 8/16/09 - Just found this on Youtube (I'm the blue avi):


First and Second Life Presentation for Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Delegation

Tomorrow morning I present before a delegation of 25 administrators from The Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China. My presentation is on our experience with teaching and learning in Second Life (SL) and is being hosted by The George Fox University (GFU) School of Education.

The presentation will take place in real life and part of the session will involve a live demo/tour in Second Life. I plan to use flickr slideshows of the work we've done with graduate education students. I also plan to meet inworld (inside SL) with Scot Headley, GFU Professor of Education, with whom I've been collaborating over the last year (as reference librarian and adjunct instructor for GFU). We'll take a tour of our university skydeck, Karuna Island and Resource Center, The Monash University China Incountry program, and the 3J Chinese Language School.

 I'll also share about my new grant funded position as the Karuna Island Consumer Health Librarian. The Karuna Resource Center (RC), which I've posted about on posterous. The RC is a place where I've carefully chosen information resources that meet the outcomes of the National Library of Medicine grant that funds my work. The Karuna RC is a good example of one of the main affordances of virtual worlds (VW), which is the many informal learning opportunities.

Here is a link to a Guangdong University news article on the first visit from the GFU delegation to Guangdong University in 2007.  "On April 16, a delegation of George Fox University (GFU) of the USA led by President David Brandt paid a visit to our university for discussions on exchange and cooperation programs." Since that time there have been further exchanges with the new GFU president, Dean of the School of Education, School of Management, etc.

This is the first time GFU is hosting the delegation from Guangdong University. I'm hopeful exchange programs and the relationship between our universities will continue to develop. There is much we can learn from other cultures and I'm glad to be a part.

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Ready for my presentation in the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life tonight-What do you think?

Ok, I've loaded the slides, tested the viewer, and rearranged the furniture for the zillionth time. I think I'm ready for my first presentation as Consumer Health Librarian on Karuna Island in Second Life (SL) tonight at 6:30 p.m. SLT which is the same as PST.

This one is a PPT presentation on how to search MedlinePlus for information resources on HIV/AIDS (I would prefer to demonstrate live on the web inside Second Life but that function is not yet available in SL (I'm hopeful that's coming soon). The presentation is free (as is everything on Karuna Island) and all are welcome!

If you already have SL on your computer, this Slurl will take you straight to the Karuna Resource Center: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Karuna/33/46/23

If you've never been in SL and would like to attend, newbies are welcome too :)
Below is the link to a website where you may sign up for a free SL account and then enter SL on a very well designed, fun and useful private orientation island.
http://virtualability.org/default.aspx


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Karuna Resource Center in Second Life

Karuna Resource Center in Second Life
I Just put this sign up for tomorrow's presentation in Second Life - now I just need to finish my presentation slides and upload them to SL, insert into viewer, place the viewer and move furniture, purchase new deck furniture and place on decks, meet with Jenaia about the welcome area and I'll be finished for the day and almost ready for tomorrow's presentation. Whew! BTW - I'm posting this to twitter, posterous and flickr all from within Second Life. I think that's pretty amazing.

Today's Karuna Resource Center Work in Second Life-July 20, 2009

These snapshots were taken today while I was working in the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life (SL). Both the RSS feed reader and the sign I created on how to connect to live chat from the NIH AIDSinfo Live Help website http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/LiveHelp/Default.aspx function in the same way.
I'm hoping these snapshots demonstrate to those unfamiliar with Second Life how this type of information linking works from within SL.

Questions/comments/suggestions are welcome. Feel free to comment here or inside SL via our suggestion/comment box (posterous is also pushing this to flickr and twitter where one could also comment :) ).

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More new work in the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life #Karuna

More new work in the Karuna Resource Center in Second Life #Karuna
This time I am testing whether or not I can send my snapshots to posterous directly from Second Life using the built in Second Life "Email Snapshot" feature. If this works it will be amazing.

World Community Grid Karuna Resource Center FightAIDS@Home Display Sign

Robin_mochi_with_world_communi

This sign points visitors to the upstairs display room (snapshots posted in prior post-click "back to blog" link above). When touched in Second Life, the sign provides visitors an option to visit a World Community Grid (WCG) page where anyone can choose to join the new Friends of Karuna Team. The upstairs displays also give out additional information links on the FightAIDS@Home research project.

What is FightAIDS@Home?"

FightAIDS@Home is the first biomedical distributed computing project ever launched. It is run by the Olson Laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. We provide free software that you download and install. The software uses your computer's idle cycles to assist fundamental research in discovering new drugs, building on our growing knowledge of the structural biology of AIDS. In addition, this research helps us study the mechanisms of multi-drug-resistance that the "super bugs" of HIV use to escape the current anti-AIDS drugs. And this research helps us create, test, refine, and share the tools and protocols that thousands of other labs use in their research against other diseases.

source: http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/