Community Has Grown To 900 Members And 130 Java technology-based eLearning Projects In Less Than 6 Months

Over the last several years, governments around the world have been embracing open standards as a means of controlling costs and reducing time to implementation in the education community, but there have been few efforts to share best practices at an international level. The JELC is breaking down those barriers to promote widespread adoption of Java technology-based tools and infrastructure for advancing lifelong learning.

Open Standards Collaborative Initiatives Take Center Stage

The JELC Portal is the host site for the group's initiatives. Currently the site hosts more than 130 projects initiated by the more than 900 members of the global community, representing over 20 countries. Several of the collaborative projects utilize the portal's infrastructure for posting content, accessing dissuasion forums, blogging and wikis including:

• Globalcode is a dual-purpose project that combines software for educational institutions with computer science. With the global team based in Brazil, the project's mission is to teach Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) by example and to benchmark code to show how different strategies of architecture design compare. Their reference application is designed for a school's management of courses, classes, teachers, and students. With more than 80 members dedicated to its progress, Globalcode is already one of the largest projects in the JELC.
• BioBox is a collection of biology research projects, including the Bio-ClusterGrid. With 28 of the most popular bioinformatics applications built into the Bio-ClusterGrid and accessed via the project portal, biology researchers from Singapore and India to the U.S. are able to collaborate.
• Twin Peaks, a project housed with Indiana University Libraries Information Technology, is developing a user interface for accessing digital library resources from within Sakai v1.0, an open project used to build integrated systems for universities and schools of higher education. The Twin Peaks project is working with the JELC, along with the Sakai project, to expand their reach to other universities and to create a community where library science developers can interact.

"Java technology is doing amazing things to develop the highest standards for global education. It's helping to create a world without borders for educators and students," said Kim Jones, vice president, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "By looking at old problems in new ways and sharing the best tools and technologies, the JELC is focused on building an open standards-based structure for global eLearning that will fuel collaboration and take education to the next level for our students and teachers."

"As a member of the JELC Advisory Board, it our vision that Lifelong Learning is available to all citizens across the world and not limited to a few," said Mike Keller, Stanford University. "It's technologies like Java that make this possible. That's why we're here today, to discuss and implement innovations and standards that will drive best practices for worldwide eLearning."

The JELC is a direct outcome of the first LifeLong Learning Forum hosted by Sun in March 2004. The LifeLong Learning Forum brought together more than 40 Ministries of Education from 25 countries to empower education leaders to work together and devise common solutions toward implementing a policy of lifelong learning.

JELC Honorary Committee Members

• Scott McNealy, Chairmanand CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Alessandro Musemuci, Information Technology General Manager, Ministry of Education, Italy
• Mr. Jianping Wu, Professor of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, Director of Network Research Center of Tsinghua University and President of China Education and Research Network (CERNET)
• Minja Yang Chargee de mission to the Assistant Director-General for Culture, and Director for Special Projects, Culture Sector, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

JELC Advisory Board Committee Members

• Dr. James F. Davis, Associate Vice Chancellor - IT, UCLA
• Ian Dolphin, Head of E-Strategy,, University of Hull, UK
• Ira Fuchs, Vice President for Research in Information Technology, The Andrew W. Melon Foundation
• Mr. John Gage, Vice President, Chief Researcher & Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Dr. Elazar Harel, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Administrative Computing and Telecommunications, University of California San Diego (UCSD)
• Kim Jones, Vice President Global Education and Research, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Mr. Michael A. Keller, University Librarian and Director of Academic Information Resources, Stanford University
• Dr. Vijay Kumar, Assistant Provost for the Educational Technology and Director of Academic Computing, MIT
• Mr. Alessandro Musumeci, Information Technology General Manager, Ministry of Education, Italy
• Francesc Noguera, Director of Information Systems, Open University of Catalonia, Spain
• Michael A. Pearce, Deputy Chief Information Officer, University of Southern California (USC)
• Dr. Rob Rennie, Vice President of Technology and CIO, Florida Community College
• John Rosenberg, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
• Assoc. Prof. Daniel Tan Tiong Hok, Director, Centre for Educational Development, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Terrance B. Verity, CIO, Seneca College, Toronto, Canada
• Edward Walker, CEO, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.
• Kehong Wang, Professor, Department of Computer Science & Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Sun's Java Education and Learning Community Mission Statement

The Java Education and Learning Community provides researchers, teachers, programmers, authors, corporate trainers, administrators, public officials, students and others a place to find, develop and share Java technology-related open source educational tools, open learning standards implementations and open course learning materials.

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