Professor Robert Vernon is part of work group that wins a Second Life community challenge grant
Aug. 6, 2008 - A proposal by Indiana University School of Social Work Professor Robert Vernon and several colleagues from around the globe, is among three projects that have been awarded grants from the University of California Annenberg School of Communication as part of its “Second Life and the Public Good Community Challenge.”
This working group came up with the concept of “Ability Commons,” a virtual world to assist small and emerging support groups for people with disabilities and chronic health issues.
The purpose of Ability Commons is to prove a space for educating people about a wide range of disabilities, and to provide a common safe place for discussion and socialization.
The international competition elicited 27 entries.
As part of its Network Culture Project, Annenberg challenged the virtual world community “to imagine new ways that virtual worlds, such as Second Life, can be used to make a contribution to the public good,” according to the university.
The three winning proposals will each receive $300,000 Linden dollars or about $800 in U.S dollars to help cover the cost of developing their new virtual locations. The challenge was underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation.
“In some ways it is historic,” Vernon said of the competition. “As far as I know, nothing like this has taken place before.”
The proposal describes Ability Commons as a “one-stop island home” for smaller and emerging support groups. “It will be landscaped as a series of structures connected by paved level pathways,” along which, variously-styled, accessible storefronts to be used by support groups will be located.”
“If I had a scattering of people concerned about spinal cord injuries, that would give them a place to have an office, they could have meetings, engage in fund-raising, development, do a variety of things,” Vernon explained.
In addition, Ability Commons will have a large arena for meetings as well as a small research center, the Virtual Ability Research Group, started by Vernon. The research group is made up of about 25 graduate students and other credentialed researchers from around the country and world. “What we want to do is support legitimate research,” Vernon said.
Vernon, or Gabrielli Rossini, the name of his avatar that represents him in Second Life, has been using Second Life as a teaching tool for the last several years. He has met a number of others interested in Second Life. One of those people, Alice Krueger, an educational researcher, saw the announcement for the competition and told Vernon, “Let’s move on it.”
Ability Commons is seen as a way to not only help small groups grow, but to offer people with disabilities a way to step out into the larger world even if they can’t walk. “Imagine a paralyzed 23-year-old lying in his family’s back bedroom, yearning for contact with age peers in similar situations,” the Ability Commons proposal starts out.
While the details of its operation are still being worked out, Vernon sees the site not only helping support groups, but support groups helping their clients learn how to access and navigate Second Life.
For those of us stuck in the real world, Second Life is “a 3D online digital world imagined and created by its residents,” according to the Linden Lab, the developers of Second Life.
Second Life participants voluntarily create artificial environments called “sims,” Vernon, along with Dr. Darlene Lynch , and Lisa Lewis, MSW, all of the School of Social Work, write in an article submitted to the Council of Social Work Education’s journal on social work education.
“Sims are rich three-dimensional renderings and can range from literal reproductions of actual places to imaginative fantasies that can only exist online. Within the sim, the participants create all features including landscapes, architecture, roads, buildings and infrastructure. Sims can be owned, donated, rented or leased. The scale of the sim can range from a building on a small plot of land to an entire region or “island” that is roughly equivalent to sixteen acres in size,” they write.
How can a virtual world make a person with a disability or health problem feel better about life in the real world?
Krueger, one of the participants in Ability Commons, talks of her experiences in a video describing her impressions of participating a virtual world.
“I didn’t even know when we first came in how fabulous it was going to be,” Krueger, who has multiple sclerosis and is unable to walk without crutches. She is the co-founder of The Heron Sanctuary, a “support community” for others facing similar situations in Second Life. She represents Virtual Ability Inc., a nonprofit organization that runs The Heron Sanctuary.
In real life she works from home, sees few people outside of her doctor and has a very limited social life. But in Second Life, her avatar, Gentle Heron, can ride a horse, swim and breathe underwater, and goes dancing nightly.
On the video, she introduces viewers to an entrepreneur who operates a nightclub called Wheelies. In real life the person has severe cerebral palsy, wears a helmet, uses a wheel chair and needs someone to change his diapers. In real life, he needs someone to take care of him, but in Second Life, he’s the boss, Krueger noted.
“All these things I can’t do in real life, I can do in Second Life,” Krueger pointed out of the rich and varied experiences she has in a virtual world. “I have a lot of fun in here.”
The three winning entries in the Annenberg Competition will be featured at the State of Play conference in Chicago in October. The conference is designed to examine how to do good within virtual worlds. It is being put on by the New York Law School and the University of Southern California Network Culture Project at the Annenberg School for Community with support from the MacArthur Foundation.
Organizers of Ability Commons hope to have its Second Life site up and running by the end of the year.
For more information contact Rob Schneider at the Indiana University School of Social Work at 317-278-0303 or at robschn@iuupi.edu.
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