| Camp has a positive impact on adolescents with serious illnesses in fact, camp increases hopeful attitudes by decreasing levels of anxiety related to the illness (Briery & Rabian, 1999 Turuk et al., 2006). The downfall with camp, though, is that it typically ends in a week and the hopefulness derived from the experience may dissipate when the camper returns to the chronic stress of his/her illness (Hinds, 1988b).Since May 2009, in collaboration with Camp For All, a camp for children with serious illnesses, a 3D virtual environment resembling the facility was created as an arena for campers to maintain their friendships from camp and explore concepts like hope and community. The technology called Zora Camp4All was introduced to 40 adolescents with cancer and blood disorders and their siblings during their week at Camp For All in June 2009. After that week, they accessed the network through home or hospital computers and joined one another in a virtual Camp For All.This research had three main goals, to discover if Zora Camp4All could: (1) sustain the campers' hopefulness after their week of camp, (2) sustain the campers' feeling of connectedness after their week of camp, and (3) promote the campers' technological confidence after using the program. The results from this study suggest that Zora Camp4All contributes to sustaining hopefulness, social connectedness, and positive technological development within the campers. Aspects of the program that aided in the sustainability remain to be determined. The campers who are siblings and the campers from an urban community scored significantly lower in each of the three areas. These findings call for future technological interventions catered to the developmental needs of these populations. |
