[Announcement from he-sl listserv]
Date: Thursday, August 25th, Time: 4:00pm – 5:00pm EST (3:00 PM Central, 2:00 PM Mountain, 1:00 PM Pacific and Second Life time)
The National Service Inclusion Project (NSIP) is pleased to announce our next web conference, part 1 in a 3-part series, to be held on Thursday, August 25th at 4:00pm EST. The overall purpose of this webinar series will be to introduce the national service community to Second Life. Second Life is an online social community where participants can interact with one another in a virtual environment through avatars. We will explore how virtual worlds create new opportunities to recruit and include new populations of people with and without disabilities who are interested in national service. Please see the following link for an example of the benefits of and opportunities in Second Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfP4DZa-Gs0.
In order to introduce Second Life, we will convene for three separate events and discuss the following-
Part 1: An Introduction to Second Life, conducted via webinar, to discuss
-What Second Life is and what it offers for new national service opportunities
-The accessibility of software and features in Second Life
-How Second Life opens up opportunities to create partnerships and reach out to and recruit new organizations and communities of people
-Applications for training and universal design
-Resource guides and getting started
-A “Homework” assignment set up your own avatar
Part 2: Becoming Accustomed to the Virtual World, simulcast webinar and Second Life presentation
Part 3: How Virtual Worlds Inspire Real-World Applications of Universal Design
Second Life training event
Featured Speaker:
Gentle Heron
Founder and President of Virtual Ability, Inc.
Gentle Heron, whose real life/first life name is Alice Krueger, continued to work part time from home as a technical writer and editor for an education research firm for five years after she became disabled, using adaptive office equipment. As a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, she found it increasingly difficult to participate in her real life community. No longer able to leave home to work, volunteer, or socialize with friends, she turned to virtual worlds to fulfill these basic human needs. Ms. Krueger is the mother of three young adults with disabilities.
Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation that helps emerging and existing members of Second Life with disabilities integrate to the virtual society. They offer members “information, encouragement, training, companionship, referrals to other online resources and groups, ways to contribute back to the community, and ways to have fun.”
Members of the Virtual Ability community also regularly lend their expertise about the accessibility of virtual environments, learning curriculum, or even the viewer software on which Second Life operates. In 2009, Virtual Ability, Inc. became the first recipient of the Linden Prize, a award offered by the owners of Second Life for “an innovative inworld project that improves the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world.”
To register for this event, please email Chad.Gobert@umb.edu by 12:00 PM EST on Wednesday, August 24th with the following info:
-Name
-Organization
-Email
-Phone
-If you require CART* to participate, please also indicate that in your email.
Please note: We will send out confirmation emails by Wednesday afternoon, August 24th with instructions on how to sign into the web conference.
*CART service provides instantaneous translation of the speech text using real-time software. Teleconference participants receive caption services over the web. This is an accommodation we provide to participants who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
The National Service Inclusion Project (NSIP) is training and technical assistance provider on disability inclusion, under a cooperative agreement (#08TAHMA001) from Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). NSIP partners with the Association on University Centers on Disability, National Council on Independent Living, Association on Higher Education and Disability and National Down Syndrome Congress to build connections among disability organizations and all CNCS grantees, to increase the participation of people with disabilities in national service.
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