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I've been a resident of Second Life since November 2006. My avatar's name is Stone Semyorka. In real life, I am a professor of mass communication in the University of North Carolina System teaching about virtual worlds, new and old media, internet and web, journalism, broadcasting, and public relations. I use SL every day for alternative instruction sites and laboratory simulations for teaching and research.

On the Internet, I edit a major website about space and astronomy, Space Today Online, and I also write the Second Edition blog, which describes the passing scene, tracing the society, culture, politics and economics of Second Life.

In the Dotoorak region of the SL mainland, I built a large campus for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Its architecture is stacks of sky platforms side-by-side near the ocean. Together they compose twelve educational venues. There are classroom buildings, indoor and outdoor seminar areas, library, new media center and journalism newsroom, art gallery, computer lab and email center, outdoor environmental classroom, science annex with astronomy and botany labs, football field, rest areas with a pond and picnic tables, t-shirt shop, and a wheat field with barn. New students have access to a nearby Newbie Convenience Center where they transfer necessities to their inventory and change clothes in private.

I built Stone's Point Park on land adjacent to the ocean in the Dotbyeul region of the mainland. It features a 100m tall lighthouse guarding the bay, a visitor center atop the highest point of land, a water slide water park, numerous gazebos, a restful English garden, boot hill, sky cabins, ponds, streams, waterfalls, paddleboats, animals including a popular llama ride, an humongous Borg Cube dreadnought overhead, and other attractions. Standing in the ocean is Stoneflower Gallery composed of two buildings displaying nature and scenic photography from SL and RL and portraits of SL residents.

I started Stone's Point Academy to support the scholarly activities of the Second Life Center for Scholarly Research in Social, Political, Economic, Scientific and Literary History. The research center's best work comes from its deep sea bathysphere research station operated by the SL Society of Oceanologists on the floor of Stone's Harbor in the ocean off Myungsimbogam and Taerae regions. In addition, the academy historians have compiled a history of pirates who pursued lawlessness off the coast of Dotbyeul, Taerae and Myungsimbogam during the Golden Age of Piracy.

As a public service, I started the Home Sweet Home project to recover those ugly bits of ad-farm land. I repurpose them into homes for the homeless in Dasom, Myungsimbogam and Dotoorak. The Home Sweet Home group shelters homeless residents who have suffered prejudice, harassment, griefing and abuse. Unfortunately, because they are not land owners, their only retreat in troubled times is to the newbie welcome areas where the cycle of harassment and abuse starts all over. The Home Sweet Home group provides an alternative escape.

I founded Stone's Point Spelunkers, a caving enthusiasts club. Members work out in a large cave training center inside a mountain at Dasom region.

I volunteer as an adult mentor in Teen Second Life where I am Dreyfus Dryke.

I am a Mac user.