Education as a Peer to Peer Grid Service

1. Education as a Peer to Peer Grid Service PTLIU Laboratory for Community Grids Geoffrey Fox Computer Science, Informatics, Physics Indiana University Bloomington IN 47404 gcf@indiana.edu gecdistedaug01

2. P2P Grid withPeers and Servers Servers at thecenter of the world Peers on the Edge of the Internet gecdistedaug01

3. Some Technology Trends • Increasing performance of Internet backbone and last mile (access) • Hand-held devices and wireless Pervasive Access • Peer to peer technologies enable new ways of collaborating and blurs distinction between clients and servers • Client-Server  Multi-tier Architectures • XML Schema and tools  All data defined as objects • Separation of client, system and persistent storage models for information • Development of (application) service model to capture common (maybe centralized) capabilities • Semantic Web, Grid or … “Next Generation Web” New Technologies implyNew Opportunities requiringtypically New Business models For Education and Training gecdistedaug01

4. What is a Grid Service? Resource • The Grid is distributed system allowing communities to access seamlessly heterogeneous resources from heterogeneous clients • Resources are web-pages, instruments, Object repositories, Simulation codes running on supercomputers …. • A Service is a generic application or capability respecting standards (general web and application specific) allowing multiple providers to compete on a given service Middle TierBroker Portal is customizable User interface Back endCapabability The Grid is essentially is the future Web IBM just announced they were investing around$1 Billion in Grid gecdistedaug01

5. Some General Grid Services PaymentCredit Card Security Catalog Warehouse shipping • Business is developing “web service” concept to support areas like e-commerce where one composes atomic services like • Security • Payment • Catalog • Goods supply Each of these services could allow Multiple choices of provider In a given session WSDL is new standard for web services gecdistedaug01

6. Architecture of Grid: CommodityScience Next Generation Consumer Web Twenty-First Century University and laboratory P e r f o r m a n c e Conv e n i e n c e Science Portals & Workbenches Community Portals Commerce Grid Education Grid Research Grid Computational Grid Education Services Computational Services Research Services & Technology Business Services Grid Services (resource independent) Grid Fabric (resource dependent) Networking, Devices and Systems • Commerce, Entertainment, Healthcare, Science, Computing, Education …. will be Grid Services gecdistedaug01

7. Why use Distance Education and Training? • New and rapidly changing Curriculum suggest the use of distance education as it will allow a few experts to deliver instruction to more students and this addresses both • The shortage of trained faculty • Offering classes with small enrollments at one university • cost of developing new curriculumQUICKLY requires many students (say around 5-10 times traditional class) to amortize cost • Distance Education is technically sound based on web curricula-- both synchronously and asynchronously -- today with very robust clear implementations available over next few years • Both delivery mechanism and identification of knowledge nuggets that are smaller than or different in content from a traditional degree suggests different approaches to certification • Courses are given, graded etc. by multiple organizations -- University integrate degrees? • Similar arguments for distance training with relative importance of synchronous and asynchronous learning differing by customer group gecdistedaug01

8. The Virtual University • Motivated either by decreased cost or increased quality of learning environment • Will succeed due to market pressures (it will offer the best product) • Assume that as with text books, only a few pedagogically excellent teachers will produce lectures; only a few charismatic souls deliver them • “Centers of Excellence” (“Hermits Cave Virtual University”) are natural entities to produce and deliver classes supported by good technology and wonderful graphics • University acts as an integrator putting together a set of classes where it may only teach some 20% but acts as a mentor to all gecdistedaug01

9. Capabilities of the Education Grid Service • Curriculum or “Learning Objects” • Web Pages becoming more sophisticated (Flash) • Audio-Video Conferencing, Chat rooms, white boards to support student, teacher, mentor interactions • Shared Documents for synchronous collaboration • Learning Management Systems • Student registration, Quizzes, Grading, Security • Database Storage (persistent Learning Objects) • IMS and ADL standards for interoperability • Asynchronous self paced access gecdistedaug01

10. Some Education Grid Services • Registration • Performance (grading) • Authoring of Curriculum • Online laboratories for real and virtual instruments • Homework submission • Quizzesof various types (multiple choice, random parameters) • Assessment data access and analysis • Synchronous Delivery of Curricula • Scheduling of courses and mentoring sessions • Asynchronous access, data-mining and knowledge discovery gecdistedaug01

11. Portal for Education Service • The User Model is that of a Portal familiar from Yahoo and the growing effort in Enterprise Information Portals (Lotus Notes implemented with Web or Object Grid technology) • Education service must use generic Portal service gecdistedaug01

12. Hierarchical Delivery Model • One could teach to 1000 different students – each at a separate workstation but … • No real opportunity for questions so better to use broadcast technology – not conferencing • Further could better deliver to 40 classrooms – each with an average of 25 students • Each classroom has central high quality A/V conferencing, displays and • A Mentor monitoring and helping students • Each student could have wireless laptop or PDA • So synchronous systems must support simultaneously disparate clients – high end display to PC to PDA gecdistedaug01

13. Authoring of Curriculum • Market pressures push to high end authoring • Authoring approaches for the Web can include • Basic HTML • Macromedia/Adobe/etc. packages like Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Illustrator • PowerPoint and Word exported • Also can include RealNetworks or Microsoft or .. Format Multimedia • Note Streaming multimedia formats have larger buffers than A/V conferencing formats • Certainly use XML to specify content and render this into attractive portal • SVG and SMIL are important 2D vector graphics and multimedia standards • HTMLdoes not give reproducible pages • Flashcan be thought of as “proprietary SVG” gecdistedaug01

14. Current Status and Futures • Commercial Systems such as Centra, WebEx, Anabas and Placeware offer similar functionality to our old system Tango for synchronous collaboration • Shared applications, chatroom, whiteboard, A/V conferencing • Blackboard, WebCT, Lotus offer learning management systems – Can they switch to IMS, ADL standards; high-end authoring and XML based object technology (not databases or files) • Access Grid (community e.g. classroom) and HearMe (desktop) are new internet audio-video systems which are be used with shared object systems • I develop research system Garnet for education portals • Features hand-held and desktop clients, integrated collaboration and some “technical advances” – major use of XML, shared SVG • Peer to Peer Grids suggest decentralized architecture (http://www.jxta.org) gecdistedaug01

15. Commercial CollaborationSystems Centra Anabas WebEx PlaceWare gecdistedaug01

16. SVG Sharing PC to PDA Batik Viewer on PC PowerPoint can be converted to SVGvia Illustrator or Web export gecdistedaug01

17. Access Grid (Argonne, NCSA) and HearMe Presenter camera Presenter mic Ambient mic (tabletop) Audience camera Access Grid: CommunityHearMe: desktop integrates phonesand Internet Audio gecdistedaug01