Sun Microsystems's Virtual Classroom Unites Global Learning
Communities
Sun, Media Grid and Leading Education Institutions Hold First Virtual
Demonstration of Project Wonderland for Immersive Education
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) June 25, 2008 --
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) today announced the first
demonstration of Project
Wonderland, its open source virtual world platform for the education
community. At the virtual event last week, members of the academic and
IT communities explored secure and flexible virtual learning
environments created by Boston College, the University of Essex, the
University of Oregon and Saint Paul College, pioneer users of the
platform for educational purposes.
"The launch of Project Wonderland on Media Grid is a signal of a sea
change in human learning potential. Connecting the 3D learning assets of
Project Wonderland to the Media Grid and providing accessibility will
now allow MERLOT's Center for Learning in Virtual Environments (CLIVE)
vision to sprout in earnest,” said Dr.
Jonathon Richter, Director, Center for Learning in Virtual Environments,
University of Oregon. “Expert-vetted, safe and
accessible 3D learning resources can now-for the first time-be collected
and managed."
The event was coordinated by the Media
Grid Immersive Education Initiative and the Sun
Immersion Special Interest Group (Sun ISIG), an open community of
educators, students, designers and technologists dedicated to exploring
applications for Project Wonderland in immersive education and gaming.
"Project Wonderland was the natural choice for launching the Education
Grid, a subset of the Media Grid developed specifically for academia,”
said Aaron Walsh, Director of the Media Grid and Immersive Education
Initiative. “With Project Wonderland, teachers
around the world can now conduct classes and meetings within virtual
worlds on the Education Grid, and they can also build custom Wonderland
virtual learning worlds, simulations, and learning games.”
Sun ISIG and Project Wonderland embody Sun's ongoing commitment to
developing open source tools and inclusive communities that foster
communication and collaboration in the global education arena. By
building virtual classrooms on the Project Wonderland platform, learning
institutions create opportunities for truly immersive education that
caters to students’ diverse learning styles.
The platform also encourages collaboration between schools, enabling
educators to easily share teaching best practices across local and
global borders.
"We see the application of immersive environments as a next-generation
distance learning environment which enhances the learning experience
beyond current learning management systems,”
said Warren Sheaffer, Chairman, Computer Science Department, Saint Paul
College. “Sun's Project Wonderland is our
immersive education platform of choice since it is robust, secure, open
source and built on a Java platform. The Media Grid is the logical
partner for our efforts since it is bringing together the world's
premier institutions that are active in the research, development,
deployment and operation of immersive learning platforms.”
The flexibility of Java technology also allows schools to easily
integrate Project Wonderland into existing enterprise applications such
as learning management systems, student systems and digital library
collections.
“Technological advances have flung open the
doors of education to new possibilities for teaching, learning and
collaboration in a globally connected world and education itself is
being fundamentally altered,” said Kevin
Roebuck, Community Manager, Immersive Technologies, Global Education and
Research, Sun Microsystems. “At Sun, we are
committed to leveraging our strengths in open source technology,
infrastructure and application development to fuel this transformation.”
Project Wonderland is an open source toolkit for creating collaborative
3D virtual worlds in which users can communicate with audio, and share
live applications such as Web browsers, OpenOffice.org™
suite documents and games. The platform is ideally suited to the
education sector because it sits inside the school's own firewall and
thus provides a higher level of security and control than is possible on
other virtual platforms. Within the Project Wonderland virtual learning
space, schools maintain complete control over content, ensuring that it
is age-appropriate, educational and engaging.
CommonNeed™,
Sun’s new hosting partner for Project
Wonderland, also participated at last week’s
event. CommonNeed provides hosted and consulting services to academic
and businesses including the recent Open Virtual Worlds Project with the
New Media Consortium.
More information about Project Wonderland can be found at: https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/
and more information about Sun's work in education can be found at: http://www.sun.com/education.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global
marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is the
Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation,
community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in
more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo and Java are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in
the United States and other countries.
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