While browsing over the map, which still terrible broken and can only browse it when zoomed in but that is something for another post. Anyway while looking at the map earlier today I noticed something interresting. The new Orientation Island Jeska briefly mentioned 2 townhalls ago, have gone live. And are being flooded by new Resis.
I logged in a alt that was still on a OI and tp'd to a one of the new islands. While it appeared there was still some final work to do, the island are in my opinion a vast improvement to the previous islands.
The new style island is divide into four small islands/sections(Communicate, Move, Search and Appearance) , and each sections has(or will have) tutorials about the subjects. The small islands have each a very different architecural look, Urban, Futuristic, Tribal and Medieval, which i think gives the resis immediately a much broader idea of what is possible in SL.
Spread around the island are also several machinima made by SL residents, like Robbie Dingo's guitar making video. While cool i think something a bit more instructual would be better suited.
One thing i noticed though was that people where not really aware why they there and what they where supposed to do. So maybe something that clearly spells that out might be helpfull. Also a clear path of what to do next.
All and all, it looks very promissing and will hopefully prepare people better. While it is clearly not completly finished yet, it already far surpasses the old orientation islands. So check it out or look at my Flickr pics.