The CCCAOE website splash page for November features Santa Barbara City College’s EXPLORE IT! Career Academy SB 70 project using the virtual world Second Life for allied health career exploration.

The Explore It! project under development at SBCC over the last several months has been chosen as the premier highlight for the Month of November on the California Community College Association for Occupational Education (CCCAOE) website.

This is the Allied Health project which Mihir Mahapatra and his team (Ryan Alexander, Ty Hegner, Greg Miller and Gonzalo Aguilera) have worked so tirelessly on, and Liz Russotti, Dept Chair in Graphic Design has been overseeing. The images shown on the CCCAOE website are actual photographs taken within the virtual environment, and illustrate the accident scenario to be conducted once the program gets under way.

These images are also being transformed into a comic book which will be used to introduce the students from LaCumbre Junior High and San Marcos High School to the scenario they will participate in as they begin to explore the different careers in Allied Health. All of this will take place in a custom virtual world created using the OLIVE (Online Interactive Virtual Environment) platform by Forterra Systems.