Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Blogging on the rugged digital shores of Davis Island in Second Life®

I recently found myself immersed in a never-ending blog post trying to cover both a compelling overview of Second Life® and share our experiences with the MH214 Health Informatics class:
On the rugged digital shores of Davis Island: in Second Life® with the MH214 Class
Hanging on the South West Corner of the Sim, Davis Island

Close-up of one of the orientation activities (camera controls)in the glistening waters surrounding Virtual Ability Island. To visit the orientation location use the following SLURL to open the SLURL map. From there you can either join if you do not already have an account, or click through to teleport to the location. Doing this will automatically launch any Second Life® viewer that is installed on your computer: http://slurl.com/secondlife/virtual%20ability/128/128/23

Touring Virtual Ability Island
Visit the Virtual Ability website.
Tags: "davis island" "uc davis" "second life", "Virtual Ability", blogging, Second Life, libraries

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Finding Medical Articles on Second Life®: MeSH by another name Medical Subject Headings: not the 3D Polygon MESH

I would like to share with you a couple of articles that were mentioned during last Thursday's class in Second Life®. These are the peer reviewed journal articles on the Virtual Hallucinations and Bioterrorism Defense research projects by Peter Yellowlees MD, James Cook MD and Martin Leamon MD. We will also dive into MeSH by another name... the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) that enable us to locate relevant articles such as these in the vast PubMed database.

Both of the articles appear to be freely available in full text from PubMed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18386971,17139026?report=citation

Note: If you are a full time UC Davis student or staff / faculty member and are currently off campus, be sure to login using the Virtual Private Network (VPN) if you are off campus, and always access the PubMed Database via the Health Sciences Library website or Clinical Resources Center in order to gain access to the full text of articles for journals for which we have online subscriptions.
As you may have noticed, it is indeed difficult to pull up articles about Second Life in PubMed. The reason for that is that many of the articles use terms such as "virtual reality" or "virtual environment" rather than the commercial name for the software. So, the best way to find relevant articles in PubMed on research being conducted in Second Life or review articles about Second Life®, is to search using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) that are the backbone of this massive database.
In order to retrieve relevant articles, this is the query I used:
"User-Computer Interface"[MAJR] AND (virtual environment OR second life)
This query retrieves 860 articles... of course, way too many for our purposes. But, take a look at the subject headings in the articles by changing your view to 'citation view' and also adding in some of the subject headings or alternative keywords to narrow your search.

Note: the controlled vocabulary used by Pubmed it called MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and in the query above we are using it and telling PubMed to just retrieve articles that have User-Computer Interface as the major focus of the article, and also find the terms virtual environment OR second life in the article.
You can vary the terms that describe the environment.

As a reminder, in an earlier post I mentioned the freely available peer reviewed journals Journal of Virtual Worlds Research that has just put out a special issue on health and healthcare in virtual worlds and also Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR):
Free full text journals:
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
Vol 2, No 2: 3D Virtual Worlds for Health and Healthcare
and
Journal of Medical Internet Research
http://www.jmir.org/2009/2/e17/HTML
A Survey of Health-Related Activities on Second Life

Firefox toolbars to the virtual world: MH214 Health Informatics Class toolbar

For anyone using the Firefox browser... or for anyone who wants a quick way to reach the MH214 class locations in Second Life... read on!
Download and install the toolbar with quick links to the Second Life locations visited during the last sessions, as well as additional links:
http://mhi214joinusinsecondlife.ourtoolbar.com/
Links include:
Davis Island (private - MH214 students & faculty only)
Virtual Palomar West Hospital
Second Health London Polyclinic
Virtual Hallucinations public location
Library Studios (my island in process)
UC Davis Extension Class site

Mozilla Firefox browser:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html

Note: Second Life viewer must be installed on your computer to use the toolbar. When you click on the buttons on the toolbar, they will launch the SLurl site for Second Life and allow you to click through which launches your SL viewer so you can login to the site.
MHI214ToolbarFirefox
"davis island" "uc davis" "second life", firefox, mh214, toolbars

Monday, September 21, 2009

Snapshots of the MH214 Gatherings & Tours in Second Life®

The virtual gatherings for the MH214 class have resulted in a lot of media from snapshots to machinima (which is video captured in a 3D real time game engine or virtual world such as Second Life®).

The following two articles available in full text via the National Library of Medicine's database, PubMed, describe two of the Second Life locations visited, Virtual Hallucinations & Bioterrorism Defense Training facilities, both on the private research islands of UC Davis faculty and fellow researchers: Peter Yellowlees MD, Martin Leamon MD and James Cook MD.

MH214- Prophylaxis & Davis Islands
Documentation of the rich visual environment can be seen in the photos from the gatherings in Second Life®:
Sept. 3rd photos: visiting the builds on Davis Island (Virtual Hallucinations & Bioterrorism Defense Training Facility) and a tour of Imperial College London's Second Health Polyclinic
Sept. 10th photos: Include shots of discussions, building demo, tours of health related
Sites.

YouTube Playlist for UC Davis Extension Health Informatics Class: Exploring Second Life® for a couple of weeks

The Playlist for videos taken during the Sept. 2nd and Sept. 10th classes and assorted other instructional videos used for the online class Second Life® portions. Parts 1-5 introducing our avatar sides:
general introductions with MH214 students and Peter Yellowlees, Marty Leamon MD and Bernadette Daly Swanson MLIS, sharing of SL® experiences, troublshooting audio capture, building demonstration with James (Linden) Cook MD and tripping and touring around the metaverse looking at medical sites and health and medical research projects.

More information on our Second Life treks can be found on the Second Tours blog that I maintained for the sessions.

View the entire Playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5333F5146C944E14

or a series of clips from Sept. 2nd and Sept. 10th tours of Davis Island... beginning on Virtual Ability Island:


Part 1 of 5: Troubleshooting audio and introductions all around...


Part 2 of 5: Building with James Linden! Health Informatics Professionals need a place and the skills to build it... our first introduction.


Part 3 of 5: More building with James and discussions on virtual worlds, avatar height and in world physics:


Part 4 of 5: Visiting CISCO's Virtual Palomar West Hospital & their RFID bracelets used by avatars to tour the facility. It is the 3D version of the hospital to be built in San Diego by 2011. Next stop, Virtual Ability Island, co-winner of the first Linden Prize, a contest Honoring Second Life projects that are Improving real lives; Studio Wikitecture and Virtual Ability were both awarded $10,000 USD


Part 5 of 5: (10 mins.) More on Virtual Ability Island and the sites visited during the Sept. 2nd and Sept 10th classes including Virtual Hallucinations and Bioterrorism Defense Training units on Davis and Prophylaxis Islands (private UC Davis locations for research projects) and the very cool Imperial College's Second Health London Polyclinic.


And our tour video from the Health Informatics 2009 Conference at the UC Davis Medical Center:

Meet me at Med Projects, Davis Island in Second Life

Students from the UC Davis Extension MH214 class: The Internet and the Future of Patient Care landed in fine form on the digital turf of Davis Island; one of the research locations for UC Davis Psychiatry and Health Informatics Faculty & research partners, Peter Yellowlees MD, Marty Leamon MD and James (Linden) Cook MD. The private islands are home to two 3D facilities housing the Virtual Hallucinations and Bioterrorism Defense projects. Articles on both projects are available via PubMed, the mega-database of the National Library of Medicine.
The class session included discussion of students' experience in SL; an informative session about the SL platform by James (Linden) Cook MD who has been an engineer with Linden Lab evolving the platform since its early days. This was followed by a building demo, the results of which you can see in the screenshots.

The Tours:


Following the very cool building demo, we visited two health related sites in Second Life: CISCO's Virtual Palomar West Hospital of San Diego.
The second stop was at Virtual Ability Island was co-winner of the Linden Prize this past May, US$10,000. for improving real lives through Second Life.
Last week we visited Imperial College's Second Health London Polyclinic.

More colorful photos of the class: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photolibraries/sets/72157622335169900/
To view the images in sequence, click on the Slideshow link at the top right side of the Flickr window:

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Working at the SW edge of Davis Island

This is where I will be hanging out on Davis Island, Second Life.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Davis/0/102/22
Once we are all added to the UC Davis group, we can gather on the island for a virtual meet-up.
Access to two free full text peer reviewed journals is available from SL and the web:
Marty Leamon MD pointed out that the most recent issue of Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is dedicated to health and health care in Second Life.
http://www.jvwresearch.org
Vol 2, No 2: 3D Virtual Worlds for Health and Healthcare

Journal of Medical Internet Research
http://www.jmir.org/2009/2/e17/HTML
A Survey of Health-Related Activities on Second Life

Prophylaxis & Davis Islands (private) in Second Life

Research Islands of Peter Yellowlees MD, Marty Leamon MD, James (Linden) Cook MD in the very beautiful Second Life. Using the advanced sky features to change the sky... World | Environment editor | advanced | follow links to sky features.

Hanging on the South West Corner of the Sim, Davis Island

Davis Island in the very powerful Second Life, where you control the sky, the water and your enhanced creative possibilities
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Davis/0/102/22

Where the sea meets the sky.. at the SW edge of Davis Island

So I have been hanging out on Davis Island on the south west corner. Yes, it's starting to look a lot like Library Studios Island. .. just love the 'outside-sim rocks with water animations). It's the work place for various research projects of the Virtual Hallucinations researchers, Peter Yellowlees MD and James (Linden) Cook MD.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research & JMIR


On Flickr
Originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar
Free full text journals:
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
Vol 2, No 2: 3D Virtual Worlds for Health and Healthcare
and
Journal of Medical Internet Research
http://www.jmir.org/2009/2/e17/HTML
A Survey of Health-Related Activities on Second Life

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Searching for 'medical consultations' using the search function in the SL viewer


Searching for 'medical consultations' using the search function in the SL viewer
Originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar

The Second Life search function is accessible via the 'Search' button at the bottom of the SL viewer window. The quick access buttons at the bottom of the viewer include the popular features including: chat, communication, fly, search, map, local map and the media buttons for video, audio, voice).


Using the search button, I ran the following quick searches:
medical consultations
hospital
psychologists consultations
medical association or medical associations
doctors consultations
and a few more...
On the results list I found a wide variety of locations, groups, avatars... with a few real life physicians with only a few mentioning their real life web sites. I googled a few of them. I was interested to see how real life physicians filled in the first life option on the profile.
What I noticed was that people did not take the opportunity to fill in the First life details. A means for verifying and authenticating RL medical professionals and their patients would need to be accessible to the patient and physician or other medical/health professional.

One of the real life organizations with medical and health consulting in SL is
Searching 'medical consultations'https://econsults.partners.org/v2/(d4auq5551qskwiqe0l2mti55)/Default.aspx
The Second Life counter-group was Partners Online Specialty Consultations. Their print version is only available via their web site.
The set of images from my searches can be viewed in larger format by clicking on the 'all sizes' option above the snapshots or in a slideshow:
http://tinyurl.com/nlkuh4/

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Introductory Videos: Create your Avatars, download and Login... see you in class

The 3 videos will walk you though the process for joining the Second Life community, creating your avatar and downloading and installing the Second Life viewer software on your computer.
http://www.secondlife.com
A playlist of the videos shown below is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D3FC4145B4052788

MH214 class: Creating your Second Life® Avatar


MH214 class: Logging into Second Life (HD 720p)

Also available in HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBnbTCouC8&fmt=22


MH214 Class: Second Life Tutorial in 9 easy steps

Also available in HD 720p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAK1kQq6Ig&fmt=22

What next?
Once you are ready to leave the orientation area/community, there will be a lot to explore. A listing of some of the notable health and medicine sites in Second Life is a good place to start your journey.

A recent issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research is one of the best starting points. Among the many sites listed is Virtual Hallucinations, by our very own Peter Yellowlees, MD and James Cooke, MD.
http://www.jmir.org/2009/2/e17/

SL Healthy Wiki is a great resource for identifying new locations of interest:
Web Resources on SL Health Information:
http://slhealthy.wetpaint.com/page/Web+Resources+of+SL+Health+Information

I can be reached in world by sending an IM to HVX Silverstar or an email to hvxsilverstar @ gmail.com

Friday, August 21, 2009

Selecting a starting point in Second Life: Campus 3D, Steampunk Victorian Caledon, Avatar Island, etc.


Slide1
Originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar
When creating your Second Life account, be sure to select the option for choosing your own starting point when you log in.
Today I logged in a new avatar and had selected the educational gateway, Campus in 3D, but unfortunately it was not available and I was sent to 'Help Island'. So I would suggest choosing an alternate community for your first login. There are a few pages to choose from.
Step 1: After you click on the avatar that will represent you in Second Life (you can always change the look later), then be sure to select the option for choosing the community where you will begin your SL orientation. It's the next check box. Be sure to check it.
After you have filled in the form with your SL name, email, real name and also selected your password for Second Life, you will submit the form and be taken to the next step (Step 2) whereby you will need to authenticate yourself by checking your email and clicking on the link to activate your account.
Then you will proceed to the last step (Step 3), you will be given the option to choose one of the communities.
Choose one of the communities.
I will create a will create a couple of short videos on the orientation. There will be many new people in the location, so it's a great opportunity to chat, make friends and share in the academic orientation to SL.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Criteria for evaluating blogs...

Evaluating Blogs: Who is the blogger? Is the content worthy to use in your research paper? Which criteria should you be using to evaluate blogs you would like to be referencing in your research papers. Well, a quick search on Google brings up a wide range of approaches to evaluating blogs.
The following sites offer criteria and approaches for evaluating blog content.

Blogs on Davis Island (linking out to the web)
Evaluating blogs as research sources: BGSU offers a section on Blogs on their Information Literacy site (see the lower part of the page)
http://libguides.bgsu.edu/content.php?pid=54229&sid=405279

Blog Evaluation Assessment; 21st Century Information Fluency
http://wizard.imsa.edu/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/blog_evaluation_assessment_v1n5.html

Way | Science, Remixed.
Criteria suitable for impact metrics - moving beyond papers
http://ways.org/en/blogs/2009/jun/21/criteria_for_impact_metrics

Blog Rubric by Marta Valle:
detailed rubric on how one school teacher evaluates student blogs
http://rampup.21classes.com/archive/2008/09/20/blog-rubric.htm

Evaluating Blogs as Research Sources: Questions to consider
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/evaluatingblogs.html
Published by Springfield Township High School virtual Library

Blog Readability: what level of writing?
smog formula estimating the years of education needed to understand a piece of writing
http://www.harrymclaughlin.com/SMOG.htm

Working on linking blogs from the metaverse to the web...
SnapshotBlogsonDavisIsland_003

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Registering for a new account

I am waiting for the email after registering for a new account...
Ben Primswitch.. still waiting

Building a display of our blogs on Davis Island

I have just begun to build a display of our blogs on Davis Island here in Second Life. Emily, yours is the first one on the list, so I will be linking to yours. The rest will follow during the week.
http://ehealthsecurity.blogspot.com/
I have added a hover script above the poster that identifies and describes the blog and a second script that loads the web page into the SL viewer .... you will be able to click through to the web to view or view in SL.
These are free scripts that I am using. If anyone would like to register for a Second Life account and login early, let me know. Just email me on the list or send me an email. In SL you can reach me as: HVX Silverstar