Crossing the Metaversal Divide: Second Life teens exchange text messages with Ugandan girl on her cell phone
The screenshot here is kind of hard to parse so let me describe it. A young person (represented by the green furry) in Teen Second Life is composing a text message to send to another teen in Uganda that she will recieve on her cell phone as an SMS message. Meanwhile my avatar (the purple robot) sits atop the chat history represented by floating text and blue bubbles that rise higher as each new message is sent. This remarkable exchange from the virtual world to a regular cell phone is made possible by the grey device behind the bubbles, a tool we call "Switchboard."
A little background after the jump...
Today Shawna and I organized a very special workshop and discussion on AIDS in Africa. About a dozen teens converged on Global Kids Island in Teen Second Life to participate in the event.
To begin the workshop component, the teens brainstormed what they already know about HIV/AIDS. We compiled a series of facts about the effects of the virus as well as how it can both spread and be prevented.
With this background information in mind, the teens split into pairs to participate in a role play. The setting was the International AIDS Conference that took place in Mexico City last month. While no major breakthroughs were announced, the focus was on developing practices including behavior modification for fighting HIV/AIDS in the long haul. The teams took on the roles of four countries around the world -- Uganda, Brazil, Thailand and Britain -- that have taken very different approaches to stopping the spread of AIDS. Each team then put together and shared a brief presentation to the "conference", sharing their challenges and successes with their respective approach.
The teens discussed that there are many ways to help prevent HIV/AIDS that they highlighted in their presentations and that one additional way is to raise awareness by getting to know someone who has been affected in some way in their own life.
To give the issue a more human face, we introduced the teens to Victoria, a 17-year old girl living in Kampala, Uganda who lost her father to AIDS when she was very little and whose mother is bedridden with the disease as well. We found Victoria through Concern for the Future, a Ugandan NGO that "locates forgotten children with innate talents and molds them into leaders." Normally Victoria would not be able to communicate with these tech-enabled teens. So we employed a new tool that we had developed called Switchboard that can exchange text messages between a standard cell phone anywhere in the world and avatars in Second Life.
Switchboard is built on top of the amazing SLOODLE e-learning platform. It works by basically parsing and routing messages using the the SMS text protocol and the Second Life open chat protocol. A web interface allows the moderator to see incoming messages and choose whether or not to forward them to the cell phone user or not. Switchboard works both in the Teen Grid and the Main Grid, and supports any cell phone in the world that can send and receive SMS text messages.
Here's some snippets from the metaversal conversation between Victoria and the TSL teens:
Justin in TSL: Hi Victoria my name is Justin, i just wanted to say Hi and ask, was it hard for you to find out about how your dad died?
SMS from Victoria in Uganda: hi, ya it was coz i was very young. my mum told me later.
Lee in TSL: Hi Victory, my name is Lee, I wanted to know what I could join to help fight against AIDS?
SMS from Victoria in Uganda: hi, u can donate anything 2 help ppl 2 teach others esp de young generation.
Victoria in TSL: Hi Victoria! My name is also Victoria and I was wondering what you would like to see change in your country to help reduce the spread of HIV?
SMS from Victoria in Uganda: teaching ppl esp de young generation, helping not 2 spread it etc. I will email them 4 u.
It was a short and terse conversation, given the bandwidth limitations of SMS text messaging to and from Africa. But hopefully it helped frame the issue more personally for our teens and help Victoria to know that there were others outside of Uganda who knew about her story and wanted to help fight AIDS worldwide.
This is just the first public trial of this innovative mash-up technology. Once we work out the kinks, we plan to release the scripts and web moderation system behind it for others to use in their own work. Thanks to everyone who participated in this experiment!
