 Hello everyone and welcome to the 9am session in the content and community track. As a reminder to our in world and web audience, you can view the full conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. And tweet your questions or comments to at opensimcc with the hashtag OSCC 14 exclamation mark. This hour we are happy to introduce a terrific session called virtual laboratory training, career recruitment and retention, our VLTC project. Our speaker for this session is the lovely Miss Sally Cherry. Sally is a lab consultant and an STI lab instructor in American society for clinical pathology member and ASCP certified medical technologist. She is passionate about the integration of 3D virtual world technology into real life lab and health problems to hands training and awareness. In April 2014, Miss Cherry celebrated her 40th year in laboratory science and was featured in the ASCP one lab news for 2014 medical laboratory professionals week. Welcome all. Let's begin the session. Well thank you for that wonderful welcome. I hope everyone is bright eyed and wide open, wide awake this morning. What we're going to start right in here, we're going to like to share with you my virtual laboratory training career and recruitment and retention project. Basically what we're talking about, we're talking about a vision. This was a real to virtual virtual vision that I had for laboratory science and the virtual, which is the basis of virtual laboratory training career recruitment and retention project. And it started as a vision of this medical technologist who is passionate about lab work and getting information out. But this vision came out of my real life experiences. Thus I call it real to virtual, virtual to real. As she was kind of saying, yes I've been celebrating 40 years in the laboratory science, 48 diverse years, 12 of those years in public health and laboratory management were working as a laboratory coordinator for the Baltimore City Health Department, their Bureau of Disease Control. 33 of those years was in laboratory consultant and training for national S and D HIV prevention training center. And five of those years was in international health working with organizations such as JAPI GO and Columbia University, which is where the information or the interest came about doing distance learning. Quite often when I was doing medical training with doctors and nurses they were unable to either come to the United States, either come to the United States or to good morning L. So hello, how are you doing? Come join us. As I was saying, a lot of times when I was doing training, the medical professionals could not come back to the area that I was doing the training. So I started looking for a, I'm getting feedback. Okay. So based on my real life objectives, can everyone hear me? Hopefully you can still hear me. I'm going to try and just talk over whoever is in that background. My base of real life objectives is to increase laboratory knowledge skills. Sorry about that. That was my bad. Okay. Sorry about that. Okay. Let's get back to my real life objectives. Based on my real life objectives were to, is to increase laboratory knowledge and skills used in identification of microorganisms associated with sexual transmission infections such as looking for clue cells, which is an indicator for bacterial vaginosis, Candidia species and trichomonas vaginalis. And this is my real life objectives. And to promote, most important was passion to my heart is to promote various aspects of clinical laboratory sites, also called medical laboratory sites such as sharing technical standards, laboratory practice guidelines, professional organizations, events, conferences, career preparation and personnel retention. First, my virtual world and the thing about it is my virtual world objectives, as you will see, are basically the same thing. But the only thing is this is a bi-directional vision I have. And this is what, what's there, what fuels my vision. The virtual objectives, real to virtual, real objectives, real life objectives are my same objectives when I'm in the virtual world. The only problem thing is that there's additional objectives in the virtual setting. That's my virtual to real, which is to integrate, which is to integrate real life, to integrate real life medical laboratory training information sharing laboratory career recruitment and professional awareness in 3D virtual worlds. Also, and this is what part of this whole presentation this morning is about to demonstrate how 3D virtual worlds can be used in the laboratory community for training, marketing, networking, career preparation and recruitment. As well as to provide technical assistance, contact, linkage related to relevant, and I stress that word, relevant use of 3D virtual worlds within the medical laboratory community. No doubt, needless to say, there's some uses, some ways or some avenues that 3D virtual worlds just may not fit in the medical laboratory community, but there's, it's too valuable over to not to use where it can be used. Like to go back over the time and get some little background information about the virtual laboratory training career project. As I was saying before, my interest came about with my experiences of working overseas. In 1991, I was doing a distance learning laboratory training session with some Egyptian clinicians using, don't laugh, a telewriter system. And we're talking about 7 o'clock in the morning, we're gathering around the table doing the training. And that's when this idea came up, there's got to be another way, like to keep my eyes open for a way to do some distance learning. 1988 through 86, I was traveling overseas doing international laboratory training, needs assessment, trained the trainers, your gam of laboratory training sessions, worked in Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, and here in the United States with other nationals. As well as 1991, I started doing, and to the present time, I started doing national laboratory training, looking for sexual, looking for sexual transmitted infections. Again, a lot of times the medical professionals was not able to come back to the training site or I was not able to go to them. Therefore, the need for a distance learning platform was always on the tables, always in front. So I was always looking. So in 2008, I joined the Second Life Community and the usability issues just made me stop, quit, left, no problem, did not go back, I deactivated my account. And that's one of the things that makes me aware of some of the issues that are present, that will be present for my colleagues in using it now. I know I was intimidated, that's the bottom line, I was intimidated using it. But I saw it was a true valuable of a, of a venue platform, not to try to go back in and increase my usability and my skills. So in 2009, I decided to go, I went back on a 2D level. I went, you went into the, I became a member of the metal place. Some of you may remember the metal place of the 2D virtual world. And that's when I built phase one of Ms. Bug Ladies Laboratory Resource Training Center. 2009 phase two came about, I went back to Second Life and I started Ms. Bug Ladies Career Center based on what is sharing information and guidelines and just general resources with the visitors who came. Much of my regret 2010, metal place closed and the laboratory project had to close down and I started exploring open simulator as a possible, possibility to expand my laboratory. The vision was still there. I knew this 3D virtual worlds was definitely an excellent platform to use a due distance learning training, networking and other tasks. 2011, I was able to find an open simulator grid called Jocatal grid, which I set up Ms. Bug Ladies Laboratory Center. Microscopes got activated once I got my mac microscopes activated. I know this is where I want to be. I can literally put slides on the microscope and show my colleagues or whoever came in for training. So I decided to expand the project. And this expansion involved the demolishing of my project that I had set up in Second Life and move most of those components to Kitely. And I'm sure you've heard quite a bit of Kitely. You'll be hearing more of it as the sessions goes on. And much of my delight in 2012, phase four of the vision was established when I set up the STI Laboratory Training Career Center in Kitely. And that's what a lot of the illustrations you'll see today and you'll see in my presentation if you visit is based in Kitely. Right now the laboratory facility in Kitely serve as the main laboratory. And as they will say in 2014, what is a grand year for me is 40 years celebrating 40 years in laboratory science. And it's ideal for me to be at this juncture of bringing the real life laboratory into my virtual community. I had the opportunity to do that in 2014 when we were celebrating Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. We had a, I did this while doing a presentation with the invitation of the awesome group there TechSoups non-profit commas. Did a presentation at their weekly community meeting. After which, a small group teleported into Kitely and we did a laboratory tour of the center. Therefore, this is ideal with Kitely is a hybrid grid accessible. So no matter what grid or individual may be in, they can come into the laboratory facility. Serves the purpose of when I need to reach out to the various commissions throughout the country and the world. 2014 started building my laboratory equipment. Some things I could not find. I found some items in the Kitely market. Some items I built myself, such as the microscopes and incubators. Another project, another component of the laboratory project. And the Kitely based SED laboratory training center and the Jakato based laboratory, Miss Buglator Center are now connected with the hybrid transport technology. I have my hybrid gates on both facilities and the various avatars of my laboratory instructors. If they're based in the, which doesn't make a difference, which lab they're based in, they can go back and forth. That makes this project an idea project at a very time, at a very time period within the laboratory. People are saying, well, why are you bothering with this? What's this real to virtual activities? What's virtual to real? I want my whole concept, my vision is real to virtual. Activities, events, processes that's going on into the real, in the real world can be taken into a virtual environment. Connections, activities, events, information that is done in the virtual setting can be brought out to the real world. I've had colleagues say, well, it's not going to work. And I said, well, what activity are you doing in real world? You don't think fits into the virtual world. So we'll look at a couple of activities here. Okay, you're doing recruitment interviews in the real time. You're doing them in the virtual world. Probably sometimes a whole lot easier, less time save, less travel and quite time saving. You have meetings in the real world. A lot of times it depends on who's on shift, late shift. The laboratory never closed. So you got a 24 hour facility. Everyone's not going to be there. It's ideal to have a virtual meeting. Information sharing, training, conferencing, networking, promotion, fundraising. These are activities that goes on in a real life that can be brought into the virtual world and it's being brought into the virtual world, and especially the virtual laboratory. The training component, this is the component that I have most interested in. My lectures, laboratory practicums, demonstrations, handouts, PowerPoints, podcasts. Anything that I'm doing in the real world, real life, I'm bringing into the virtual world. Therefore that is what the virtual laboratory and training center is all about, what we focus on. Doing the training on site, no matter where the person is located, we can reach them through the virtual setting. And one of the most important things, people call me a network weaver. Real-time network building, very essential to forming coalitions. In real life, you're meeting your network with your local colleagues, local researchers, service providers, stockholders, stakeholders, and your board members. The nice thing about the virtual setting, you're dealing with, you're meeting with local and global colleagues, researchers, service providers, stakeholders, board meetings. And you're also able to interact with other laboratory and allied health programs throughout the world. The one of virtual setting, you want to have a meeting with someone in the UK, you can make a range with someone having a meeting in the UK without getting a plane ticket, or without having to have a long distance phone call, you can meet in a virtual setting. That's a nice idea. Another way of using the virtual setting. So the whole project consists of two, like I said, two components, one in Kitely and one in Jaketa Grid, the Virtual Laboratory Training and Career Center in Kitely, which is located in my shared village, which is the Community HIV AIDS Resource Exchange Village. And it's located there and it's provides, this is where we do the actual training, and plus also meeting and network space have office space and we do rent some office space, has a laboratory career center and then this laboratory career center is linked to the various laboratory organizations that provide laboratory development and training and evaluations for potential laboratorians, which is very essential because we're facing a shortage of laboratorians and this is a great way to reach out and recruit for potential laboratorians. Also have a laboratory study area and these are actual working areas. Anything that's in this particular facility is either connected to a resource or a live person site or whatever. The whole idea is information sharing. I want to be where someone can be maybe in Nigeria. They want some laboratory information. They can come to this site, they can visit the site, click on the information, they may wanna meet with someone, talk to someone, and might even wanna sign for one of the training sessions. We also have a research lab in a biohazard chamber, which right now we're in the process of inserting and adding a Ebola information component to that, getting, helping to disseminate the information about Ebola, how to handle the specimens, how to transport the specimens. This is all essential information that laboratorians need to know and it's constantly changing and sometimes people don't have access to it. Well, what we like to do, we put the links to direct them right to the source of the information that they need to do the work that they need to do or just for the general information. Now what you see here, this is the Virtual Laboratory Training Career Center. As I said, we have a biohazard area there. We have the entrance there. When you come into the entrance, you have a guide or you can click on a, we have our teleport. It's handicap accessible. You don't have to go up steps and this little avatar is challenge. I am somewhat challenged when it comes to walking and what hey, which is probably why I am still standing by the sofa here, here. But that's one thing we, if you come in, we have elevator, you click on the button, you can go up the steps, down the steps. On the first floor, we have a network area and had general information about events, laboratory related. On the second floor, we have our career center and in our career center, we have most of the laboratory organizations linked there. Someone's interested in American Society, clinical pathologists, they can click on a poster there and it goes to their website. If they're interested in microbiology, they can click on American Society for Microbiology and go to their website. The whole idea is making information accessible and this particular case, making laboratory science related information accessible. Within the training center, we also have our computer lab. So we need to start doing some computer work. We have it set up there and it's a full operating computer lab. We have SED laboratory training, which will be doing a laboratory microscopic work. We're able to add slides to the microscope and the students of the clinicians can actually click on the microscope and see the organisms or images of the slides that have been placed on there. So we can do basically as much as quotation mark laboratory practices you want to do. We're putting on slides there. They have been prepared, maybe wet preps or maybe Gramscian slides, but the patients slides that you will see in real life, you can see right here in the virtual setting. Now what you see here, this is some of the laboratory equipment I was talking about because the need was there and that's one thing I love about the virtual setting. It's a pie, you have to have a pioneer spirit. Some things are in place, some things are not in place, but as a laboratory that doesn't bother us whatsoever. Laboratory is a resource for information individuals. I needed a microscope. I built myself a compound microscope and one of the things about this particular microscope it was built for training. So when we talk about the components and parts of a compound microscope, the students can actually pick it apart, put it back together and really get quite often laboratories or even getting used to that microscope nor the components parts and how to use it. Most important thing is being comfortable with that microscope so you can use it to help you in identification of microorganisms because the bottom line is quality care for the patient. And the laboratory is a piece of the puzzle and we try to make our contribution on helping to get that patient diagnosed, get them treated and back with their families. We have an incubator here, we set up, we do incubations and down in the laboratory we need to discuss first, organisms are different things. We like to have everything. The whole vision is to have things almost equal to or parallel with the real life laboratory so we can use it as a fully training operating area. What you see here, I would mention we have the two sites. We have one educator grid and one in Kitely. This is our laboratory. This was the phase three lab and educator grid. What we have here is our conference room, our training room, classroom, viewing room, different terms for it. But what base we have here, we can actually show the various organism slides that I was showing real life. I can actually show them right here in world just as I'm showing these slides this morning. And the Ms. Bug Ladies lab at educator grid, we have a visiting researchers lab. We have medium space and we have the laboratory but we have the bi-hazard room and we have the library and study area. You might wanna know where did the Ms. Bug Lady come from? That's my nickname that was given to me by a colleague several years ago and it's stuck over the years. I get a little excited when I'm working in the laboratory and I come across that elusive bacteria organism that just what you wanna find, you want to find what's causing that patient discomfort, what's causing that patient's infection or in some cases the disease. And when you find it, it's a red letter day for some concern. That's why they call me Ms. Bug Lady. I get very excited about the bugs. Also in the Ms. Bug Ladies laboratory, they set up a scenario of various organisms. And that's another thing about the virtual laboratory. Whatever your mind can imagine, you can create. Great teaching tool, building various organisms and you look into the, in the center at the bottom illustration, you see this little black smoky area. That's my walk-in incubator based that I have yeast grown in there and I actually have built out the yeast, have the giant plates. The great demonstration for medical students and high school students, another way to get them interested in laboratory science. I became interested in laboratory science when I was a shy high school student in the 10th grade several years ago. Therefore I know this is a good way to reach the students, show them, tell them about laboratory science. Someone shared information with me about becoming a medical technologist. For this plus years later, I'm a medical technologist and still loving it. Whoop, and get back to something active that goes on in the lab that can be done in the laboratory in a virtual setting. And that's the whole idea and the whole purpose of, one of the main purposes of for the project in addition to doing the various laboratory procedures, but also to demonstrate and show what can be done in that setting. Here in the first, we have a meeting with a colleague and I had the pleasure of meeting various colleagues in the virtual setting. We have weekly community meetings and that's another thing you can form in coalitions, meet with individuals, you can do networking. You can also, any YouTube videos which excellent training YouTube videos are present, that can be viewed in the laboratory. I have one that we are running, we change them up from time to time, we're talking about becoming a microbiologist and what it takes in the laboratory. Another way to bring students in and share with them what they need to know about becoming a laboratory in. And needless to say, there's various challenges. And that's one of the things you'd be mindful of but you cannot let the challenges stop your project, your vision. One of the big challenges that I was saying before was the equipment. Desktop, laptop, some tablets, you wanna be concerned about your system requirements to be able to access the virtual based environment. Usability, as I said before, that's what made me to come out of the virtual setting several years ago. But with training and coaching, I was able to attain the skills and understanding to use the technology. Another challenge was project funding. That's one of the reasons why I had to close down, I closed down the second life project. It did not fit into the budget so we had to find a way to expand. The whole idea is not to just keep it at one level where this is phase four, that was the whole concept. We have the next phase five will be a little ways to come because we're gonna build on this phase four but we hopefully will be able to get out more additional funding through sponsorships, grants and training revenue because we see this is an awesome potential for bringing the laboratorians together, provide training for laboratorians and medical personnel and other allied health professions. One of the challenges that's, I guess the number one challenge I face is the technology phobia. So this is one of the most important things is getting to buy in from decision makers in the facilities. Too often people are not, when they're not familiar with something they tend to back away from it but I think if they see the value of it that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this presentation one of the reasons why I'm always putting my, my little avatar friends out there on the line with me to say, you know, wave our balance, this is what we can do in the laboratory, this is what we can do in the virtual community. It's not, it's a non-traditional platform so you must have that pioneer spirit as a colleague of mine said, we're an excellent article several years ago in the hybrid grid business newsletter. You have to have that pioneer spirit, you don't wanna give up. But the thing about it is our military, our education institutions and several other colleagues have that pioneer spirit. They're using this setting, it's an excellent setting and it must be used especially by the laboratories. We don't wanna give it up because one of the main lessons learned is don't give up. Technology is a laboratory thing and virtual worlds are ideal laboratory tools. This particular project came, was emerged out of a vision that I had in looking for a platform to do distance learning. So because of that, I express the people live your vision in and out of the lab and let your vision be a virtual based vision. And now I kind of went, rather quickly on this, but I wanted to make sure I had some plenty of time to have questions and other discussions and for if they have some comments on how we're using it in there. The overall idea is to bring laboratories and to bring medical personnel and may they be located in my local area or on a national basis to be able to bring them into that virtual setting, meet with them, talk with them. Sometime might not be training maybe just sitting, having a meeting, discussing or doing some planning for projects, but you have that virtual setting. I don't have to get on a plane. They don't have to get on a plane. We can meet in a virtual setting in the laboratory. We can discuss laboratory issues. We can bring the components and the principal people who we need at the table in that setting. And what I have included here, oh, I must go back. I forgot, I must introduce my colleagues in the virtual setting. I could not do this without my colleagues. And they are my colleagues. I'm Sally S. Cherry, BSMT ASCP. She may serve as the lab consultant, but she can do nothing in the virtual world without us. Sally Cherry, she's in Kikely and she's also in the open simulator community conference grid. Savannah Cherry is an educator grid. This is the team and our open simulator laboratory team that works together getting information out, sharing information and spreading the word about using virtual world technology to enhance the laboratory activities. Indeed, a real to virtual, virtual to real vision for laboratory science. And I've included my information here, contact information, feel free to contact me. Our website is at real to real, the number two virtual, number two real.com. You can email me a Sally at cherrynetwork.com. Although my motto in real life is have Microsoft will travel in the virtual life is real to virtual, virtual to real. Yes, I do get excited about this because this is a platform that I see a need for because of a lot of the budget cutbacks, a lot of the time restraints, location restraints, physical, and when I say located, I'm talking about the physical location restraints. I don't have to wish I could work with my colleagues in distance lands. I can meet and talk with my colleagues in distance lands and laboratories have a lot to talk about because there's a lot of people we need to be out there helping. And at this time, hopefully we have plenty of time for questions or input and hopefully there's some laboratories that may be listening, some laboratories may be in the audience so I'd like to get some feedback from you if possible with any questions. Well, I really, I truly enjoy sharing my vision, my laboratory vision with you. Like I said, feel free to shop in and visit us. We're in Kitely. We're on the region, share a village. You can go to kitely.com and you put look up on our group of worlds and you put in share village, you can find it. And we have, when you land there, you have still see a nice sign with nice little bacteria. You just click on the sign, you'll be transported, teleported to the laboratory. Any other questions? If there's no other questions, that concludes my presentation. Like I said, you have any information or any questions like this and follow up. Feel free to contact me, Sally at cherrynetwork.com. If you can't remember that, just do a shout out or do a hit me up on Facebook. I'm on Facebook, Sally S Cherry on Facebook. Okay, well, thank you, Sally, for a terrific presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. In this room, the next session will be applying real life research to create virtual landscapes for historic sites with Nova Saunders at 10 a.m. Thank you again to our speaker in the audience. We'll be back shortly with the next session. Well, thank you.