A couple of midwifery resources

There are a couple of really exciting initiatives that have arisen, in part, out of our new programme development and both have come about through grants that were awarded for their development.

Midwifery Junction
This is a really exciting resource for midwives in New Zealand who have links to our schools of midwifery. They may be interested in postgraduate study or they may be working with students. It pulls together educational resources, links to online sites of interest and also provides a forum for discussion for midwives and for students. It also provides information to women who are interested in midwifery education, either because they are keen to have a student involved in their birth experience or because they are interested in being a midwife.

Second life birthing centre
This is an initiative that was started by Sarah Stewart and has been a work in progress in collaboration with the SLENZ group and midwifery lecturers, principally in Otago but also in other schools around New Zealand. A virtual birthing unit is being developed which will ultimately be a fantastic learning resource for students, women and also for midwives.

Survey

I have created an online survey using freely available software. This will gather anonymous data about the impression midwives and others have about second life and its potential use in midwifery education and professional development. I have loaded a link to this survey into my side bar so it is permanently available here. I have also loaded a link onto the Midwives in Second Life Wiki

I hope to gather some data to support any future publication or presentations I may make about the use of second life for midwives.

I would value your input to this and it will take very little time to complete. When you click on the link the survey should appear straight away and you can complete it there and then,

Thanks for your help

Minutes from midwives in Second life

I have created a wikieducator page to save documentation from our virtual meetings in second life. Here you will find two links at the moment, one to the notes or 'minutes' that were made of the meeting, which is stored on another Wikieducator page. The other is to the complete transcript of the meeting which is stored in Google docs.

If you have information you feel could be added to the Wikieducator page please feel free to do so. You will need to register with Wikieducator first but this is free and simple to do. You then just need to hit the edit button and you can edit the page. If you wish you can hit the Discussion tab at the top of the page and leave a comment. I welcome your feedback on this. Thanks to Clare for this picture.

By the way I finally managed to add a photo to Wikieducator with a lot of help from the tutorials for wikieducator.

More fun at Leicester in the UK with my friend Aastra in secondlife

Here are some more amazing photos from Leicester Media Zoo


This are Aastra and me on the blimp




Here we are in the surround cinema. Not sure where this is though. Let me know if anyone recognises it.

Exploring second life for education

I have been looking at Second life in preparation for a meeting of midwives. I have been struggling to find good places to go to. When I search in second life I only seem to come up with some very 'dodgy' sites, not the sort of places i really want to hang around in.

I finally did a web search for slurl (which is second life urls) and found a really good wiki with lots of interesting places to explore. I also went to Leicester Universities Media Zoo. Which was very interesting.

This is a slide share of my experience

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Midwives and educators meeting in second life.

I have been furthering the plans for our meeting in second life to
explore opportunities for midwifery meetings, conferences and
educational opportunities.

In preparation I took my laptop to be serviced and somehow have lost
my list of friends in Second Life that I had already created. (This is
one of the frustrations of technology, sometimes it lets you down.) If
you have already offered or accepted friendship from me in Second Life
and receive another request will you please accept it, this is
important?

Plan for meeting of midwives in second life.

When:
Saturday 1st of March (Note now changed to Sunday 2nd of March)
United Kingdom -- 0800hrs
Perth WA -- 1700hrs
Brisbane -- 1800hrs
Sydney -- 1900hrs
New Zealand -- 2100hrs

Here is a World Clock with the time for this meeting in your
time
N.B. If this time is a major problem for you please let me know as
soon as possible so that I can make changes if necessary.

Where:
On Koru Island in the Kiwi educators meeting place, in the virtual
world of Second Life.
I will teleport you to this location

Program:
1. Start time, meet and greet and get settled.
This may take a wee while to get everyone comfortable.
2. 10 minute power point presentation
Highlighting some of the options currently available in Second Life.
3. Open floor for discussion
Brainstorming opportunities for midwifery and midwifery education in Second Life
4. Arrange subsequent meeting to further discussion in venue to be arranged.



Please look at my blog postings to help you understand what you need
to do in preparation for this meeting


In particular check this one to get you started

You need to be registered with Linden Labs Second life to be able to
participate.
You need to create an Avatar and go through the initial process on
Orientation Island in second life. This will take you anything from
one hour to a few hours to do. If you wish to participate you will
need to do this. Once you have done this you will need to email me
your Avatars name so that I can offer you friendship. This will come
to you in second life and as an email. You must accept this offer of
friendship in second life so that I can add you to my list of
contacts. Sarah Stewart will invite your friendship as a back up to
my list. My second life name is Dacary Dumpling and Sarah's is Petal
Stransky.


I will be online for about one hour before the meeting preparing for
it. I will be looking to see when people in my contact list come on
line and will then invite them to teleport to my location on Koru
Island. You need to accept this invitation and will arrive at the
island with myself and the group.


If you are interested please email me directly so that I can contact you clarify the process and make arrangements with you for the meeting.


Carolyn's email, cardacs@gmail.com

We have a second life midwives group

We now have a second life midwives group. Today Sarah (Petal) and I(Dacary) met with Sufia (a Uk midwife) in Second life. This was on a UK education Island, not sure which one). Sufia has been in Second Life for about one year now and has more knowledge about it than Petal or I. We met in a church that her husband has been creating. That is him on the right.

We managed to get voice communication going and we were able to actually talk to one another which was fantastic. Sarah and Sufia (SL name)had a lot in common as they had both been involved in establishing email lists for midwives in the past. The international midwifery community is really very small and it is not too hard to come up with people that you know in common.

Sufia also took us to a conference area on this Island and explained that the billboards can be changed to have postings which are more suitable for midwives or educators or whoever the group is that is meeting at the time. I do realise that I still have lots to learn in Second Life. It took a long time for me to get my voice activation going as I had lost the buttons, which are usually on the bottom toolbar, and had to reset them. With Sufia's help I managed to do this. For a while I was just there, while the others were talking, and I could not participate, a bit of a frustration which people who are struggling with getting to grips with second life might not be able to tolerate. It is quite a learning curve but I am becoming increasing convinced that it is worth the effort, to be able to collaborate and communicate in this environment.

If you are keen to join the Second Life midwives group you will first need to join second life. Then search for groups and request to join the group. Perhaps one of the things we can discuss when we all get together is how we might use this group? Will we have regular meetings of the group and where might these take place? Does anyone have any ideas about this?

One of the really exciting things is that Sufia's husband is quite skilled in construction in second life and Sufia herself has also been building. Sufia's husband, Vidz Ah, is creating the Church in the first photo here. This could be useful if we decide we need to construct a place for midwives, and if he is willing to help.

Progress in my online facilitation for assigment 3

I put a call out through this blog and also on the midwifery research list from the UK. The result is that I have a few people who are interested in looking at brainstorming issues for midwifery education in second life. So I am feeling that this much more possible now than I did previously.
Most of those who have expressed interest are also quite new to virtual worlds and some I think will be coming into second life for the first time. So there will not be a lot of expertise in this regard. I am also very new to this and have solicited the help of Claire Atkins (Arwenna Stardust) to help me with the technical side of things.
Clare has taken an interest in the facilitating online learning communities course and has helped several of us novices begin to find our way in second life. She is also going to help up-skill me a little in preparation for the big day. Many thanks for all your help Clare. I copied this image from Arwenna's blog, hoping she doesn't mind.

Sarah (Petal Stransky) and I (Dacary Dumpling). That is Petal on the right and me on the left. Went into second life yesterday and had a look around a conference site at Jokaida. We have different abilities and inabilities in second life. I am better at moving around, (I think Petal's legs are just too short really) and Petal has mastered teleporting others and inviting friends. Together we might be able to work something out. One of the people who has responded is involved with a project at Coventry University, where a virtual birthing room/meeting place has been established in the virtual place they have developed. I am hoping that we might be able to visit there to see what is happening and help to gain a better understanding of the possibilities, particularly for collaboration.

I have not set a date or time yet for the meeting. I think the 23rd or 24th of February looks like the most promising dates at this time. It should be either an early morning or evening meeting. At this time I am thinking it will be an evening meeting for us and a morning meeting in the UK.

Virtual midwifery in the "Mommy and Me clinic"?

What a strange experience I have just had.
Those who have followed this blog will know that I joined second life a wee while ago and have blogged about some strange experiences before.

I started my adventure this evening by reading about midwifery awards from the Royal college of Midwives UK. Two midwifery educators received an award for a virtual pregnancy teaching package they developed. This is something that has been on my mind ever since I ventured into this other life of social networking, virtual worlds and all the web 2.0 paraphernalia. so I did a search for virtual pregnancy and found this recent blog post about second life birthing clinics.

So I went into my second life persona "Dacary Dumpling" and searched for a birthing clinic and teleported to Mommy and Me clinic. I was fortunate enough to meet Noble Barnes.
He is a graphic designer and is the person who has built all of this. When I first arrived I sat at a computer console which has a brochure that informs about what is available here and made some notes. I was informed that the chief doctor here is a doula and student midwife. Now I know that this is an American site and midwifery is maybe not autonomous in this part of the world but why would a doula, student midwife want to call herself a doctor??? Sorry Noble, you were very kind but I do find that very strange. You do not have complicated pregnancies here, the virtual women push the virtual babies out by themselves. Lets get real here and let the midwives do what the midwives do at least in this virtual world.

Noble told me that this virtual birthing center was established so that women who cannot have babies in real life can have this experience in the virtual world. Couples can choose what sort of pregnancy they want, they can have a single baby of any colour or twins or, strangest and scariest of all, a furry baby or a wolf baby. Well that really threw me so much so my computer froze and I had to reload. He showed me the tummy he has developed called the tummy talker which the woman wears. She and her partner can pat it or rub it or sing to it and they can see the baby move.

Then he took me to the clinic room. In here they weigh, measure, take blood pressure and perform ultrasound (3D of course). He performed one on me and I saw the typical 3D face on the screen. (I don't know what you would see if you were carrying a wolf). I could also hear the foetal heart. After this he took me to the birthing room. They have a shower with a bar to hold on to. When my Avatar held onto the bar it moved rythmically up and down, there is a similar bar on the wall in the room. Their is also a birth ball to sit and rock on. There is a deliver bed (like a theatre bed) which is where the babies are born at present. He took me through a birth. I jumped on the bed and my body was moving and pushing. Lying semi prone and every now and again gave a wee jump with the hips. (I didn't notice any sound effects here). Eventually the baby moved down through my pelvis and out. Noble told me Avatars cannot birth in the shower currently but they are working on that and also plan to have a birth pool.

I was thinking about the possibilities of scenarios for students and clearly it is a possibility to create something like this, as Noble said it is not the purpose of this center. He felt that such a thing is a possibility. However I can see that what they have done has taken a considerable amount of work and although it may meet the needs of the people who go there it will take a lot more to get something that is useful as a learning tool for midwives or health professionals. To do something like this would need a collaborative effort, with midwifery educators who have a very clear understanding of what they want and computer graphic experts who can interpret this into useful interactive imagery. Still it is a step on the road and much further than I imagined we might be.

Many thanks to Noble Barnes for spending the time to show me around. I do worry a wee bit about people who might have deep psychological problems and how they might handle this sort of virtual experience. Is there some sort of help or support for someone who just can't handle the experience? It is all just a little bit strange.

Using blogs, wikis, elluminate and secondlife in midwifery education and professional development

I have already explored the use of blogs and wikis in previous postings, however my thoughts on the usefulness for these tools continues to grow as I use them more and learn through this use. Sarah discovered that it is possible to create a blog with multiple users at blogspot. A lecturer could establish a group blog for a group of students. Students can then be encouraged to blog about a topic they are investigating or reflections on learning activities they are engaged in. This would provide opportunities for informal learning and provide students with experience and tools which could benefit them in future midwifery practice and facilitate life long learning opportunities.

For midwives currently in practice group blogs might be a useful tool for sharing practice information and share experience and evidence for practice. Rural midwives might feel that this is particularly beneficial for them, providing opportunities for sharing not otherwise available.

Wikis have potential for groups to explore a particular topic in greater depth. A group of students or midwives could commence a wiki on a topic such as group B streptococcus perhaps. Each person can independently access the same document and add content or make changes where new evidence comes to light. This collaborative process could be used for developing group presentations or reaching consensus on treatment options.

Elluminate provides the opportunity for midwives or students to come together from a computer in their own home or a local source such as a library internet cafe or maternity facility. Synchronous discussion can occur through talking or text message. Also course material or powerpoint slides can be shown on a whiteboard online at the same time. Larger groups can also be broken off into smaller groups to brainstorm particular issues. A good internet connection is required however. Although this can be accessed through a dial up connection some material may take a very long time to load.

I have been thinking a lot about second life today following my last experience there. I am not sure whether all of the things I have been considering would be possible. Perhaps those with greater knowledge could enlighten me. I believe that there are a number of uses for SL for midwives and midwifery students. I am about to fly to Auckland for a training day in real life. Midwives are traveling there from all over the country, this is logistically difficult to organise and very expensive. In second life these people would be able to come together. Powerpoint presentations could be delivered and discussed in real time. Participants can converse and share their thoughts and experience in real time. Experts could deliver real life video lectures through this medium. This must be more cost effective than getting everyone together form all over the country.
For undergraduate students there could be many learning applications for SL. Lectures could be delivered with real time discussion to follow. There is actually a physical presence to interact with. There is also an opportunity for scenario based learning . A particular scenario could be established. The students could be given information and could then make choices about the action they might take. This would lead the student to pass [teleport]to another part of the scenario where the consequences of their choices could be explored and further choices offered. Use of animations and graphics could make this very real and give a feel for the real life aspects of the issues which are explored.

The downside to all of this is getting everyone comfortable with using these web 2.0 tools and the time it would take to prepare and deliver some of these things, particularly the graphics etc for second life.

There are also many other applications such as you-tube videos which can present skills for students to view in their own time. Slide-share presentations which can either be viewed on the site or loaded onto blogs and many more tools which are sure to be used in the future.

I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to explore and consider these various tools and resources through the facilitating online learning communities course. I would love to hear from midwives, students or fellow lecturers about how they feel about these resources. Do you think these could be useful to you? How do you feel you could use them?