I was flying around the other day checking out the many new changes for NMC Campus (more on that shortly, but I am thinking this is NMC Campus 3.0!) when I saw a cluster of green dots on NMC Orientation.
Sure enough, this looked like a class or group getting into SL for the first time, and it was fun to watch the baby avatars walk, talk, and dress themselves 
Since July of 2007, the NMC has offered our own web site for creating SL accounts, where the newly created avatars end up on the Orientation Island we designed and created, rather than the crowded and often, intimidating, public ones. NMC Orientation also offers advanced orientations for people that may want to go back for a refresher (learn more…).
In that time, our site was ushered in over 7000 new avatars, and you can see the history in our tables and charts of our Registration Stats page, including a big bump in September 2008 when Robins Hermano aka Steve Hornik, accounting professor at the University of Central Florida brought more than 900 of his students in world.
NMC Orientation offers a less crowded experience for new avatars, but for one at a time newbies, it might be odd as there is often no one there. We’ve discussed about trying to organize some volunteers like the ISTE Docent program does so well. One tool we hope to finally add is similar to one we use on our NMC Conference Center Help Desk, where we can list four avatars who are available to help, displayed on a board that indicates if they are online.
If you click a panel, that person gets a message and can then come over to help (ironically, this is technology we borrowed from the escort business in SL!). We’ve been wanting to do something similar at NMC Orientation, and have some empty boards up for a while:
If you have ideas about such a program (what a nifty one it would be for experienced students to work as guides in SL?) or are interested in helping out, let us know or send CDB Barkley a message in world.
Regardless, we continue to see new people enter Second Life, and we are all (I hope) interested in doing what it takes to make their entrance a positive experience and to have them stick around.