Media Grid standards, technologies and initiatives (such as Immersive Education) are developed by an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies (see MEMBERS page for details). To join, or for more information, contact the Media Grid standards group director.

>> AUDIO TRANSCRIPT :: EDUCATION GRID OVERVIEW <<

1.0 PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID OVERVIEW  

In the context of Immersive Education the term platform refers to any virtual world, simulator or game-based environment that may be used for teaching or training purposes. The Immersive Education platform has evolved considerably over the past decade and the 3rd generation (“next generation”) is now under development. The previous two generations of Immersive Education were based on specific client-side platforms tied to proprietary server-side infrastructures. The future of Immersive Education revolves around multiple client-side platforms working in unison through the server-side Education Grid. Based upon open source technologies and open standards, the Platform Ecosystem and Education Grid will provide educators with a comprehensive end-to-end infrastructure for a new generation of virtual world learning environments, interactive learning games, and simulations.

1.1 EDUCATION GRID KEY FEATURES AND CAPABILITIES  

1. Content services (storage, search and delivery services)
2. Collaboration services (simulator, game, multi-user, application sharing, text/voice chat, webcam, etc.)
3. Academic services (assessment, grading, grade posting, course construction, content construction, etc.)

1.2 FIGURE: PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM + EDUCATION GRID  

2.0 EDUCATION GRID BASELINE REQUIREMENTS UNDER CONSIDERATION 

• Platform and vendor neutral
• Open standards
• Open access
• Open APIs and HTTP interfaces
• Open and interoperable file format(s)
• Open hosting with conformance and compatibility clauses
• Free for education and non-profit use
• Sustainability model through for-profit usage fees (e.g., commercial video games, corporate training)
• Multi-format content assets (videos, learning games, worlds, 3D objects, images, audio, etc.)
• Quality Control and Legal Vetting (Digital Librarians / Domain Experts):

  1. Review, Categorize, Tag, Metadata
  2. Obtain Licensing and Distribution Rights

• Multi-tiered metadata architecture (e.g., tagging by domain experts, educators and users)
• Asset linking and associations (e.g., linking research papers to assets in the system)
• Federated identification (authentication and access controls)
• Public and private environments (e.g., private classroom settings available only to registered students)
• Usage metrics (avatar history, record/playback, etc.)
• Content watermarking and security measures (hashing, encryption, and so forth)
• Anti-spoofing mechanisms with support for alternate avatars tied to real world identity

3.0 EDUCATION GRID TIMELINES 

• 2007 Dec 08: Education Grid pre-announced at Harvard University's Immersive Education Day
• 2007 Dec 08: Content Submission Live at ImmersiveEducation.org (submit via Director)
• 2008 Jan 10: Education Grid described during the NMC pre-Summit event
• 2008 Jan 12-13: Education Grid officially announced during Boston's Digital Media Summit
• 2008 Jan 12-13: Requirements gathering during Boston's Digital Media Summit
• 2008 Feb 01: Requirements gathering meeting in Second Life (ad-hoc meeting; submit via Director)
• 2008 XXXXX: Draft requirements posted to grid.ied for internal review and revisions
• 2008 XXXXX: Draft requirements posted to ImmersiveEducation.org for public review
• 2008 XXXXX: Requirements finalized
• 2008 XXXXX: Open file format selection announced
• 2008 XXXXX: Content search form live at ImmersiveEducation.org
• 2008 March-December: File format conversions, build-out, platform integration

4.0 COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES 

Individual and group-wide communications include direct email, email discussion groups, conference calls, virtual world meetings, and in-person meetings. Continual building and integration of the entire system may be conducted daily using dedicated open source tools such as CruiseControl and Dashboard. Open source version control systems will be utilized for team-based, code-level collaboration and to archive daily builds online. In addition to these daily progress indicators quarterly progress reports and project management documents will be released to the public through ImmersiveEducation.org and Initiative member Web sites.

During the design phase the Education Grid will be decomposed into discrete modules of functionality that are isolated from one another to the extent possible. By building the infrastructure following a loosely coupled, service-oriented architecture (SOA) in which the various software components are independent from one another we will increase our productivity while simultaneously reducing module interdependencies. This approach also enables much of our work to proceed in parallel and provides us with the opportunity to continually adjust our ongoing software development efforts on a module-by-module basis, reducing the likelihood that any one component of the system will negatively impact the development of other modules. We will use industry-standard load testing and security vulnerability tools (both commercial and open source) to continually test these aspects of the Immersive Education infrastructure as it evolves.