The Lab - a space for young people with Asperger's

Over the past few months myself and a colleague at Victoria University, Stefan Schutt, have been working on a new idea for an after school drop in centre for young people with Asperger's Syndrome. This idea has stemmed from our previous Connected Lives project where we found that we were able to use technology in a very positive way with many children with Asperger's.

There is a blog following the project here, which will both be housed in and share staff with Oztron and our virtual world projects.

Last week we were fortunate enough to have a journalist(Natalie Craig) and photographer(Craig Sillitoe) from The Age newspaper here in Melbourne, come to look at what we have been doing and are planning to do. Thanks to Daniel Clarke from VU for organising it.

The Age

SMH

The page was translated for a Chinese paper the next morning;

Sing Tao

and also created quite a bit of chatter on Twitter.

A couple of days later Sam Varghese from ITwire also did a story about the Lab;

ITwire

Pharmatopia video

Here is a short promotional video explaining the work we are doing for Monash University and their Pharmatopia Project.

The Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, is leading the way in worldwide teaching innovation with the development of a virtual hi-tech teaching tool that is being enthusiastically adopted by leading pharmacy schools from around the globe.

Project update video for Connected Lives

The Connected Lives Project was also recently awarded for 'Best Community Engagement' by B-HERT.

CIT Hospital Update

We are currently working on a hospital for CIT, Canberra Institute of Technology.

The following slideshow contains captions which explain a little bit about what has been built so far.

Vicroads Virtual Worlds Lab

On July first 2010 I helped Mandy Salomon facilitate a 'Virtual Worlds Lab' at Swinburne University for Vicroads. The aim of the day was to explore the future potential of virtual worlds. After some initial discussions, participants created 'avatars' and were able to experience life in a virtual environment, exploring, designing, and socialising. They were then able to attend a virtual conference and tour by the CIO of the City of Edmonton in Canada, Chris Moore.

The full blog for the day can be found here.

Update - Connected Lives, Virtual world builds for Victoria University; School of Construction, Monash University; School of Pharmacy

It's been a while since the last post, lots is happening.

Connected Lives is just about to wrap up, we are currently in the process of writing the project up. The general theme of the paper will be 'Increasing the social connectedness of young people with Asperger's Syndrome through the use of collaborative virtual environments.' We have also been meeting with a wide range of people in the telecommunications, education and health services industries in order to look into where the project might go to from here. One part of it is digitalrespite.com which should be ready in around a month and worthy of another post. The other side is pushing for more individualised and specialised education programs for those with Asperger's.

Also at Victoria University we are continuing to work with the School of Construction Industries in virtual worlds. We are currently working with specialists across a range of areas to create engaging, 3 dimensional, interactive assignments. After a crew meeting last week I am quite excited, we have some ideas which are perhaps not so new to gaming, but new to virtual worlds and new to education.

At Monash University we have been working on a couple of projects which are part of Pharmatopia, a virtual environment in Second Life which involves over 12 schools of Pharmacy from around the world.

The first project is a Virtual Sterile Clean Room. The aim of this build is to train pharmacy students in clean room theory and process.

The second project is an artificially intelligent virtual patient bot, which will be used by medical and pharmacy students for interprofessional development.

Another fun thing I am involved with is leading the 'Dev Lab' fortnightly on Friday afternoons at Melbourne Grammar School. The Dev Lab is a place where technically minded folk can gather and work on projects together. Current projects include a couple of websites, the Epic Lan, and some virtual world activities.

I am also working on a few other projects, including some virtual worlds work with Swinburne and Vicroads. I hope to have a lot more news to share shortly.

NYE Art Project

This is a featured project at Instructables, which is pretty cool after all I have learnt from that site.

Craig helped. He needs a website I can link to.

Article for Australian Teacher Magazine

Here is an article Stefan and I just wrote for Australian Teacher Magazine, about the use of virtual worlds in education.

Article about the Avatar Project in The Age

First time I have bought the Age in 5 years. Looking good guys!

Click here for the online article

Other links;
Stuff.co.nz
Vodpod
Sydney Morning Herald
SL
and many many more, it's amazing how fast news can spread.

Connected Lives Video Interview for Vichealth

This is a video of Stefan, John and I explaining the project we are doing in partnership with Vichealth and Interchange Gippsland.



TRANSCRIPT

"What we are really interested in is seeing how these technologies can positively impact the sense of connectedness of young people with disabilities, particularly with Asperger's Syndrome and related conditions. I guess this has been inspired by some of our students at the uni who had Asperger's Syndrome, and we found that they used virtual worlds to practice being social, at the same time they were really good at computer skills themselves."

"We will be working with a group of up to thirty young people in a range of activities within a virtual world. These activities will be designed to engage them in social interaction and a range of other areas. We will be measuring that interaction to measure how this technology impacts these young people."

"The project involves Interchange Central Gippsland who are connecting us with the younger people, and it will be researched by Victoria University. I am really looking forward to the project, it's a great opportunity to work with cutting edge technology and young kids who really need it."