Marcel Mosswood & a Safe Metaverse for Youth

Marcel Mosswood discovered Second Life and Open Simulator in the same year, 2009. She was looking for a way to use the metaverse for education and collaboration. Her goal was to create a safe space in the metaverse for teaching children, from first grade to high school level. Public grids were not the ideal place for this. “I postponed using them as a place for children to study until one day I met a friend who was equally passionate about using the metaverse as a place to study,” says Marcel Mosswood, known in RL as Maria Magdalena.

“Together with that friend and my husband, we developed our own metaverse that is safe for children. The advantage of using opensim is that I can create it on a private, closed server so it is suitable for use as a school.”

Marcel has a booth (number 16) on Expo Zone 3 and the OSCC. She is a staunch supporter of the event. “OSCC is a gathering place for experts in using the metaverse for research and education, this really interests me because I can learn many things from these experts, especially those who can develop the way we educate in our metaverse school.”

Marcel’s Metaverse school, based in Indonesia, is called Suluh Bangsa Mulia. “It is just a regular school, the only exception is that learning activities are carried out in the metaverse, not in physical buildings,” Marcel explains, “In our school, there are various types of students. Some tend to be critical of others, some bully their companions, and there are also those who easily get emotional. This causes various emotional conflicts. So far, when we talk about emotional conflict in the metaverse, we are talking about adults, what about children in school interactions? This is what made me interested in studying it and presenting it to the OSCC 2023 audience.”

See more about Marcel’s presentation here: https://conference.opensimulator.org/events/managing-student-emotions-in-the-metaverse