December 17, 2009
December 10, 2009
December 7, 2009
Remembering Dr. Leslie H. Jarmon (Bluewave Ogee) by Second Times reporter GreyWolf Mornington
GreyWolf Mornington was kind enough to write up a lovely article on my boss, Dr. Leslie Jarmon (Bluewave Ogee), who passed away recently. I was honored to be asked to share my memories of Bluewave for the article, and very surprised and pleased to find a snapshot of my Bluewave-inspired artwork (the pillar of swirling waves) included in the article. My interview rambles on a bit, hahah, but other than that I'm happy with how nicely this article turned out. (:
-Warrant Neximus
November 26, 2009
Remembering Bluewave Ogee
Published by Joe Sanchez on 25 Nov 2009 at 01:30 pm
Remembering Bluewave Ogee
Dear Friends,
With sadness I regret to inform you that a wonderful and kind soul, Dr. Leslie Jarmon aka Bluewave Ogee passed away last night (11-24-09).
As many of you know, Bluewave has been undergoing chemo therapy for cancer of the lymph nodes the last year. On Friday she was placed in hospice care at her brother’s home in Austin, Texas. She has been surrounded by family and friends. Last night at 8:30PM Leslie passed away.
I was able to spend the weekend at her side, she was in good spirits, jovial and at peace. We spent alot of our time reminiscing about Second Life and the Educators Coop. She loves all of you and she wanted to thank you for all your work and collaborations over the last few years. I asked her if she had a message to share and she replied
“tell them its been REAL”
Rx has built a site where we will keep a permanent memorial for Bluewave. Please visit and in the spirit of collaboration, add a few prims : )
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Educators%20Coop%205/63/98/44
Warmly,
North Lamar / Joe Sanchez
October 9, 2009
Bryn Oh’s Eerie “Willow” Build at UTSA Art Space – Wow… o.o
http://blip.tv/file/2435685 [err... problems posting the video here for some reason when the embed code worked on Posterous just fine.]
This is probably one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. (:
If you’d like to visit the tree yourself click here for a teleport. This was created by Second Life resident Bryn Oh. Click here if you’re interested in viewing other machinima she’s been working on.
Birthday Tribute to John Lennon in Second Life
Commissioned by Yoko Ono herself. She posts a link to the SL location on her twitter feed. Wait…. What?
Teleport by clicking here!
October 7, 2009
October 1, 2009
Imperial College London Provides Nursing Training via Second Life
I’ve been looking into nursing education and training available on Second Life. Imperial College London, a sim located on SciLands, has an impressive start providing training to its med students. (It’s important to mention that this project was in no way meant to replace real life training. It’s just a distance learning tool for those who learn well that way.) The activity takes place in a respiratory ward where students practice basic protocol on four different patients with varying symptoms. Before getting started your avatar must first wash his or her hands (protocol that is just as annoying in a virtual world as in a real one). After reviewing the patient profile and listening to audio of the patient’s breathing patterns, there are a number of different tests that can possibly be run. That’s actually as far as I got because I have no idea what each of the tests are for, haha. More to come soon!
September 28, 2009
cogito ultsch at untold ark art gallery
Some awesome stuffs built by Second Life resident Cogito Ultsch. 
Click here to view the art displayed in the photograph. More work by Cogito can also be found at Tejano Tech, a University of Texas San Antonio sim part of SciLands.
September 25, 2009
“UT System Project – 50 sims” – Guestblogger Joe DeCristoforo on VLCI
Joe DeCristoforo, UTSA Campus Lead for the Virtual Learning Community Initiative, guest blogs for Thinkerer Melville summarizing the project I am helping with as part of the undergraduate team at the University of Texas – Austin. [original link here]
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UT System Project – 50 sims
Fri, 09/25/2009 – 14:04 — Thinkerer Melville
The University of Texas project Transforming Undergraduate Education Program is building a statewide virtual learning community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators. The project has 50 sims in Second Life to support that effort. (These may still be in construction and not yet open to the public.)
A friend of mine is involved in that project, so I asked him to write a summary as Guest Bogger.
Guest Blog by Joe DeCristoforo
Asst VP and University Registrar at The University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Texas System Transforming Undergraduate Education project
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is just one of 16 component institutions that are part of the University of Texas System Transforming Undergraduate Education grant. In addition to UTSA, there are eight other UT system universities (UT Austin, UT Dallas, UT Permian Basin, UT Tyler, UT Arlington, UT Brownsville, UT El Paso, and UT Pan American) and six health science centers (UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, UT Health Science Center at Houston, UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and UT Health Science Center at Tyler), plus the UT System governing office – all totaling a near 50 island Archipelago in Second Life – the largest higher education, system wide project of its kind to date in this virtual world.
This project is officially called the “Virtual Learning Community Initiative” and is the brain child of Dr. Leslie Jarmon, senior lecturer from UT Austin who teaches in the Division of Innovation and Instructional Assessment area. The purpose of this project is to stimulate creative approaches to instruction that increase student access and success while being cost-efficient or reducing instructional costs at all 16 campuses. This project has two distinct but inter-related tracks: (a) At the UT System Level – a system-wide virtual collaborative learning community of students, faculty, researchers, staff, and administrators and (b) At the Course Level – to improve the learning experiences and opportunities for individual undergraduate students and all other learners
On August 25, 2009, all 16 component project leads met at the UT System main office in Austin, Texas, to review the grant and assorted initiatives. Since this grant itself relates directly to virtual worlds, that was the only time that all components will meet in the same, shared physicai space. The group will hold all of its other meetings in virtual space (approximately twice monthly until July 2010).
There is a great sense of excitement and enthusiasm with each of the component institutions, which is evident in how easily each area is willing to share information with each other to promote the goals and objectives of this grant. Though this $250,000 grant project is only being funded for one year, there is a hope that each institution will see the value of this technology on their respective campuses and continue the UT System archipelago; hopefully, with even more islands and initiatives! For more information, please visit the VLCI web site.
