And the Winners Are........

 It's with great pleasure that I announce the winners of the 2009 Vision Quest, created and dedicated to Max the first virtual guide dog who made his debut on June 27th, Helen Keller Day.

The Vision Quest encouraged participants to imagine what it is like to be blind and to explore how the relationship between a blind person and his or her guide dog is formed.  Our three winnners did a magnificent job.

First Place
Franchella (aka Pata Facciponti in her first life)
Teacher, photographer, videographer, academic technologist, GIS mapper; wife, parent and grandparent; animal-lover and historic preservationist; writer and poet, Pat Facciponti enjoys studying and writing about just about anything.  Franchella Milena, her alter ego, was born into Second Life in January 2008.  Together, Franchella and Pat collaborate on adventures of discovery, learning, writing, building, and teaching in Second Life.  For her three-part submission entitled, "Journeys and Inersections." Franchella will receive $10,000 Lindens and the HKD award.

Second Place
CorDeRosa Loire (aka Laura Fedeli)
CorDeRosa Loire is the first and only and beloved SL avatar of Laura Fedeli, an Italian teacher and researcher working in the field of instructional media and distance education. Currently she is a PhD candidate in e-learning, Knowledge Management and Psychology of Communication at University of Macerata, Italy. Her award winning entry is entitled, "The Story of a Dream." For her efforts, CorDeRosa will receive $7,500 Lindens and the HKD award.

Honorable Mention
Louise Later (aka Louise Nicholson) 
Louise's piece, entitled "Lucky's Great Hopes" could not be considered for an award because she is one of the organizers of Helen Keller Day - hence the honorable mention.   In Second Life, Louise Later is the avatar of Louise Nicholson.  Louise came to Second Life to develop and teach classes that business managers are required to take by state and federal law.

She thought the highly adaptable world of Second Life would be the perfect place to demonstrate inclusion. After all, in SL, a big quarterback-sized CEO could have an avatar who is a little old black woman in a wheelchair.  So, Louise was all revved up and ready to go with her team of innovators at KEY Ethical Advisors and Moderne Communications.  However, she discovered she could not see well enough in SL.  Second Life itself needed to become more inclusive.  So she put the "business mangers" project on hold, while she and members of Virtual Helping Hands developed Max, the VHH Virtual Guidedog as assistive technology so that people who are visually or print-impaired can use SL effectively.
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Louise is an award-winning writer, a California-credentialed preK through adult teacher and specialist.   She won the “Golden Rule Award for the top volunteer in Southern California” for her work at LARRS—the Los Angeles Radio Reading Service.  She also co-produces "Access Unlimited" on KPFK 90.7 FM, a radio show about issues involving disabilities that is streamed inworld at Wheelies and over the net at KPFK.org.
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Louise Later shares her apartment at Wheelies with Max who has his own incredible one-prim doghouse by this year’s “Resident Choice Award-Winning Prim Sculpter,” Vickie Greenwood.  Louise Later is the Concept Developer and Team Coordinator of Max, the VHH Virtual Guidedog project.

To see the full text versions of all the winners, please visit RezLibris at www.rezlibris.com

Comments

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very informational... educative as well, i read and felt like reading over and over again....good job!

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Hi guys...My own experiences with that are rather limited, although I do have an alt who happens to be called Adrian, a name that lends itself readily to gender-bending, and who currently looks like a woman. She's never had a date, though ... as far as I remember, she never even talked to anyone