Midwives in second life

Return to Midwifery page.

The virtual birthing unit

The virtual birthing unit project built an ideal birthing unit in Second Life based on research by the University of Technology Sydney, with funding from the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission's SLENZ project.

International midwives day

May 5th is International Midwives Day. The theme is midwives reach out to women wherever they live. I think it would be great to celebrate this by getting as many midwives together in second life as we can. This is a variation on the theme and is midwives reaching out to midwives (who are also mostly women) wherever they live. Is anyone else interested in doing this. You can go to the discussion section of this page and comment on this or you can to to my Blog and leave a comment. May 5th also happens to be my husband's 50th birthday so I might not be able to participate myself but I am happy to promote and organise.

Second life meetings

We started with some formal meetings but it is very hard to get people together from all over the world. I will try to be online every Sunday morning NZ time and will offer to teleport anyone who logs into SL to join me on Koru Island. Some weekends I cannot make it as I do some locum midwifery work, or I am otherwise busy. I will not be available now until the 6th of April 2008.
Please feel free to organise any meetings you wish and feel free to post the times here.

0900hrs Sunday NZ
2000 hrs Saturday UK
0700 hrs Sunday Sydney
0500 hrs Sunday Perth AU
1600 hrs Saturday New York
1300 hrs Saturday Vancouver (and Second life PDT time)
0500hrs Sunday Tokyo
2100 hrs Saturday Berlin.
This world time clock might help for all other world times I would suggest that those of you with an interest connect with each other and will be able to see when they come online and get together themselves.

Tell us about your meetings in Second Life
This wiki would be a good place to share your experiences during these informal meetings. You can go to the discussions section and tell us about what you did, any ideas you had and what you hope you might do in the future. I will start this off with the meeting we had this morning 16th March 2008.
Below I will add the second life names of those who have been interested in second life for midwives. You can then go into second life and send an offer of friendship to this person. If you wish you can check back here to see if this person is on the midwives list before accepting. If you do not see your name there please feel free to add it. You need to register with wikieducator and log in before you can do this. Details of how you can do this are below. Here is a quick start page to help you get started editing wikieducator and a place where you can practice editing wikieducator.

Second life names on midwives list

Note: This may not be the same as the list of midwives in the second life midwives group, but I would encourage everyone to join the SL midwives group as it is another good way of connecting and contacting each other. You can also see which other group members are online at any time.

Sufia Shepherd (Owner of SL Midwives group)
Dacary Dumpling (me; co-owner of midwives group)
Moonshadow Questi
Bluesky Larkham
Petal Stransky
Aastra Apfelbaum
Willow mcCaw
Marge Hawker
Darla Mornington
Liana Knelstrom
Sudbury Runningbear
Lisachris Latte
Lunesca Michelak (I have not found this person in world yet)
Soo Sciarri
Trinny Dreamscape
Vira Galthie
Kinytya Avro

Kiwi educators

Kiwi educators meet at 2000hrs NZ time in the Kiwi educators meeting place on Koru Island and you can also go there to meet with others who have an interest in second life for tertiary education. Arwenna Stardust will be able to help you.

About this space

This space has been created to record information about the Virtual Midwives group in Second Life.
Midwives met in this virtual environment for the first time on Sunday the 2nd of March. You will find links below to the transcript and minutes from this meeting.
Minutes and transcripts of following meetings will also be posted here. In addition I will record progress towards using this virtual environment for networking, collaboration and education of midwives.

Adding information or editing information

You can change this page if you wish. You need to sign up for an account first, see the login /register option at the top right. You can then select the edit option and add or change content. Please leave a note in the discussion area to let me know what you have added or changed.
Discussion You can also add a comment in the discussion section of this space. You will see the 'Discussion' tab at the top of this page. when you click on this you will be taken to another section where you can easily leave a comment.

Meetings

First meeting, 2nd March 2008

Midwives have established a group for sharing and collaboration within the virtual world of Second Life.
We have had our first meeting you can read about this in Carolyn's Blogor in Sarah's blog
on in Merrolee's blog
(Merrolee is an Otago Polytechnic colleague from the School of Occupational therapy and came along to help and support us at this meeting.)
We are very grateful to Kiwi Educators for letting us meet in their meeting place on the Island of Koru. This is land in second life owned by the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology so thanks also to them for allowing us to use this place. Thanks also to Clare Atkins (Arwenna Stardust in second life) and Isa Goodman (SL name) for helping and supporting us as we find our way in this strange environment.
Meetings are to continue and the second meeting is scheduled for the 9th march 2008

Minutes for the first meeting of midwives in second life
Transcript from midwives meeting in second life 2nd March 2008

Second meeting, 9th March 2008
We had our second meeting of midwives in second life today. I was great to meet up with three midwives from the North American continent and one from Australia. Thank you to you all for coming and also once again to Arwenna for helping us all out and to Sarah for also coming along and supporting. We struggled at the start of the meeting to get audio working and gave up in the end just communicating through text. This is quite a challenge with a group and I am doubly glad audio worked for us last week. We also had problems for some with getting connected at all and Sarah crashed out of second life once while I crashed and had to resume four times. Others did not seem to crash. The sexual health area looked very interesting but there were lots of scripts being offered to us all the time. if we had been communicating in voice it may have been OK but trying to communicate in text when lots of other text was appearing all the time was too much really. Arwenna's garden and cave are quite magical places and a real pleasure to see.

On reflection for a group such as ours I think second life does hold tremendous possibilities for collaboration and networking. I think these possibilities are yet to be realised. I would not feel happy at this stage to use second life to meet with students as i do not feel it is reliable enough and would cause some anxiety for students. At this stage I would prefer to use software such as elluminate to have meetings with students. Given the pace of development in second life I believe that the time when it is more suitable for meeting with students is probably not far away. I therefore am happy to continue developing my skills in this environment.

It was disappointing that none of the others from last week made it. Understandable though given our busy lives. I have not organised a further meeting at this stage and will wait and see if there is support for this. I will go online on Sunday Mornings around 0900hrs NZ time 1200hrs Saturday Second life time as often as I can at Koru Island Kiwi educators sandbox, (Koru 161, 212, 34 PG - Koru Sandbox). I can then practice building while I am waiting. If anyone turns up I will be happy to see them. I will wait for a little while before logging off. I am not around every weekend however as I often have midwifery locum work in the weekends.

You can see a slide show of the meeting and photos here
You can see a transcript of the text of the meeting here
I will add any further information about meetings and gatherings in the discussion section of this wiki. Can you please do this too and we can all learn from each other. I would be interesting to know what others think about the meetings too. Thanks for your support and interest. This is something that I think will continue to grow in value and significance.
This is an image from a group that met and danced on Koru today, 16th March 2008.

Read about this meeting here Thinking about midwives in second life, and in the discussion section of this wiki

To join us in second life

First of all you will need to download the Second Life software from Linden Lab. Once you have done that you will have the opportunity to create an Avatar (your online persona) and explore the orientation area of second life. in the orientation area you will gain the basic skills you need to be able to start experiencing life in this virtual space. You can search for the midwives group and request membership. Once you are a member of our group you will be notified of meetings and any other topics of interest or activities. There are many other groups you might also wish to be involved in. I have several postings on my blog to help you get started in second life.
Help with joining second life
Up coming meeting on the 9th of March 2008
Minutes for last meeting in second life

Survey

Could you please complete this simple survey, it should only take a few moments of your time
"http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=a5vuk0j5y3o0w3j404415"

Click here to take our Online Survey

More about adding your own thoughts

To add your ideas, first log in. If you do not have an account you will need to register, simple and safe to do. You should be able to come back to this page once you have logged in. If you are taken to the main wikieducator page, click on the projects tab, in the side navigation bar, and scroll down until you come to midwifery. Once you are in the midwifery page scroll down to 'midwives in second life'. Then you will be back here.

Click on the edit tab for the section you wish to edit. Add your thoughts and click save. Easy as pi.
There are some editing options at the top of the page, for bold text and line breaks etc. Don't be frightened to have a play around here.
Now for your contribution

Tips and tricks for using second life

Add here:

This is a great conference presentation by Sarah Robbins, Intellagirl. Well worth watching for those considering second life as a resource for flexible learning or distance learning.