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The Archives
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03.06.08Virtual World-Based Education for Autistic ChildrenNorthwestern University is developing a program using ‘virtual peers’ to help autistic children communicate with children in the real world. The program, part of the school’s Articulab school, aims to use these virtual children as models for real life children. In an early session, it was discovered that autistic children aged 7 to 11 interacted slightly better with the virtual peer, called Sam, than with RL children. “Certainly we’re not saying that virtual peers make the best playmates for children with autism,” said Andrea Tartaro, a study researcher. “The overall goal is for the children with autism to generalize the skills they ...
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03.03.08Terrorism and Virtual WorldsWired recently reported on government plans to study virtual worlds and their potential for terrorist training and activities. Over at Threats Watch, an intriguing commentary on whether there's validity to the study: I have often commented to my friends in the academic community that I am surprised that more extensive studies on the sociology of the Internet, how people can interact and co-exist with each other in the virtual world has affected life away from the computer. Frankly, I have a hard time accepting the opposing point of view that virtual relationships cannot become very real. On a very simplistic level, the ...
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02.29.08New and Improved SimsUsing the Sims Online architecture, a development team has launched EA-Land, a revised version of the game that the team says, “has made this game fun again.” Every Wednesday, the game will be stopped for a few hours, new features will be added, and the game will be restarted, a revolutionary tact. Not only will users have to keep up with the weekly changes to the game, but it also keeps developers in closer contact with community and can respond quickly to its wants and needs. This newer version of The Sims Online also includes: - All 12 cities housed into EA-Land - A Wiki for ...
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02.29.08Tweaking e-Learning – Web 2.0 and Virtual WorldsRan across Enzo Silva's excellent blog on Web 2.0, virtual worlds, and education. A great read with lots of resources and ideas, including this presentation of David Brear that summarizes practical technologies and approaches: [slideshare id=257416&doc=web-20-educational-applications-1202450018501881-3&w=425]
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02.28.08Healthcare Mash-Up: Imagine Second Life, IBM Avatars and Google HealthSpeculation maybe, but hints of things to come in a series of recent announcements in the healthcare field: * IBM is opening a healthcare sim in Second Life whose purpose is to provide a 3D demo of how its information systems facilitate better patient care and information management. Nothing like walking through a "real" simulation to see the impact of what's usually invisible, namely technology. Continue Reading...
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02.27.08MIT Dialogues on Truth, Technology and the Virtual WorldMIT has added a videodisk of the Cleveland Public Library’s Lockwood-Thompson Dialogues from 2005 to its collection. The dialogues, monitored by Jaron Lanier, are titled “Truth, Technology and the Visual/Virtual World.” Participants include DJ Spooky the Subliminal Kid, V.S. Ramachandran, and Bellamy Printz. "Jaron Lanier, computer scientist, composer, and visual artist from Berkeley, California was the moderator for both programs. In April he held a public conversation with Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, a scientist interested in art and the brain. The discussion topic was learning to appreciate the brain in new ways because of new technologies for looking at the brain. In ...
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02.27.08The Government is WatchingData mining and profiling could soon become a part of online game worlds, if the US intelligence community has its way. In the Data Mining Report Act, it is being proposed that suspicious behaviors and actions that occur in virtual world could pose a national security threat. Sound Orwellian? Sure is. This is not the first time that we’ve noted the movements of government into online worlds under the ruse of terrorist and security threats to the nation. The report comes from the Federation of American Scientists, a group founded in 1945 – after the Manhattan Project was completed – that believes ...
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02.26.08IBM Opens Healthcare Island in Second LifeCNN gives detailed coverage of IBM's opening of a healthcare sim in Second Life, which includes the following (quoted): Visitors can then walk, fly or use "transporters" to visit the various island stations: -- The Patient's Home: In the secure environment of a private home, patient avatars can initiate a PHR and populate it with their personal health characteristics and clinical history, accessed and downloaded from physician EMR data. They can also establish privacy and security preferences as well as health directives. The ground floor demonstrates ...
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02.26.08Virtual Worlds Presentation: Dutch SlidesAlways looking for new resources for how to present or explain virtual worlds, and came across this which, unfortunately, is in Dutch, but which includes the following timeline: [slideshare id=42899&doc=virtuele-werelden-een-wereld-te-winnen-9939&w=425]
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02.26.08Virtual Worlds on Mobile Phones – MiniFridayNice little "test application" from the Finnish company Sulake, which launched a miniature virtual world that works on Nokia Series 60 phones in December and now boasts 30,000 downloads.
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