Second Life News: Midwifery and Molecules October 26, 2009

• Midwifery, birth and Second Life

• Can Training in Second Life Teach Doctors to Save Real Lives? (Discover)

• A Virtual Science Environment in Second Life

Mary Anne Clark describes the organization and uses of Genome Island, a virtual laboratory complex constructed in Second Life. Genome Island was created for teaching genetics to university undergraduates but also provides a public space where anyone interested in genetics can spend a few minutes, or a few hours, interacting with genetic objects—from simple experiments with peas to the organization of whole genomes.

• Molecular models in SL

• Virtually Useless #fote09 #fote09vw

I’m not against virtual environments – it’s SL I have a problem with. There are many potential applications, the ones that particularly attract me being travel replacement and carbon footprint reduction. However, I don’t feel that virtual environments are good conferencing tools – I don’t need a 3D representation and the lighter touch of tools such as Eluminate and Skype are much more appropriate for this application.

• Trademarks and the SLeducation Wiki

As some readers probably already know, I received a request from Linden Lab on Wednesday in relation to the Second Life in Education Wiki requesting  ‘not to use our trademark “Second Life” in your name or website name and not to use “SLeducation” in text or in your domain name…’ and to ‘..make the changes to your website name and domain name as soon as possible and let us know when you expect to have this done…’.