Global Education and Learning Community Grows to 1330 Members and 177 Technology-Based Projects

Global Education and Learning Community Grows to 1330 Members and 177 Technology-Based Projects

The GELC Advisory Board Reconvenes to Discuss Progress and Ideas for Continuing to Improve the Community's Resources and Projects

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW) today announced that the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) is thriving, growing to more than 1330 members with more than 177 projects in less than eight months. Sun convened the first advisory board meeting in September 2004 to gather the key influencers in technology and education to focus on developing the technology community's collaborative open standards-based projects and tools for teaching and learning. The Community is already seeing the positive impact on education tools and techniques, and the GELC advisory board is meeting again this week to share ideas for continuing the momentum.

The purpose of the community is to help people find, develop and share open source educational tools, open learning standards implementations and open course learning materials. The portal at https://edu-gelc.dev.java.net/ serves as the project home for the GELC. The site is a gathering place for researchers and educators, teachers, academics, programmers, authors, corporate trainers, administrators, public officials, students and others. It currently hosts global projects from more than 20 different countries and 1330 members. Several of the collaborative projects utilize the portal's infrastructure for posting content, accessing discussion forums, blogging and wikis including:

Girls' Java (TM) Cafe: https://girlsjavacafe.dev.java.net/index.html : An online community established to encourage high school female students to study Java programming and Computer Science (CS), and to increase the number of girls who take Advanced Placement (AP) exams in CS. This exam has the lowest percentage of participation -- in 2003, only 16 percent -- from young women at high schools.

The Cafe hosts a verified network of high school CS teachers who moderate and lead the community. Female students can also interact with AP CS alumnae to understand their experience with class. To inspire students to explore solutions on their own, the teachers do not directly answer questions on homework assignments. Instead, they ask well thought-out questions geared toward helping students reach answers by themselves and lend support, advice, and guidance.

The Cafe is open to students who are invited to participate by their teacher. For more information about registering and joining the Cafe, please visit https://girlsjavacafe.dev.java.net/gjcregister.html

Giant Picture Dictionary: https://giantpicturedictionary.dev.java.net/ : The goal of this project is to provide a global database of pictures that will help students learn about topics from Algebra to zoology. Studies indicate that students learn faster when they have a mental image of the subject. They will be able to simply type in a word, and the Giant Picture Dictionary will retrieve a picture that they can mouse over and click for more information.

To collect the online images, the community will provide Java-based user-friendly software for content experts, allowing them to easily contribute to the visual database. As the project develops, the Giant Picture Dictionary will expand to include other Java-technology based visual learning tools including memory techniques, communication, and translation, and that would all use the same core Java technology.

Tspell (English): https://tspell.dev.java.net/ : Tspell project intends to provide applications for solving Turkish Natural Language Processing (NLP) related computational problems. Tspell is just one example of how the GELC is functioning to improve technology that will help lead to better communication between international education and research facilities.

The Turkish language has a different morphological and grammatical structure than Indo-European languages such as English. Since it is an agglutinative language like Finnish even making a simple spell checker is very challenging. Using Java technology, this project will try to overcome these challenges. Some target problems are:

-- Spell checker
-- Suggestion mechanisms for wrong words
-- Sentence analysis, grammar check
-- Random word, sentence generation
-- Slang conversion, idiom substitution
-- Translation



"We've seen a tremendous amount of interest in the GELC since we convened the first advisory board meeting in September, and we expect the number of community members and education and learning projects to continue to grow at a rapid rate," said Kim Jones, vice president, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "One of the really great things about this Community is that it is directly involving the students, and encouraging them to take an active roll in advancing teaching and learning. Their participation will be a huge asset in defining the tools and technologies that are most relevant to their concerns and issues."

"We're back at the table this week to discuss the tremendous impact the GELC can have on the global education and research communities. The kind of growth and momentum we are already seeing in just a few short months is very encouraging," said Terrence Verity, chief information officer at Seneca College.

"Amazing things can happen when you provide the forum to link international teaching and learning resources, and our hope is that we will see more students, teachers, technology experts and developers participating in this global community," said Ingrid Van Den Hoogen, vice president, Brand Experience and Community Marketing for Sun Microsystems.

The GELC was first discussed at 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. The next Forum will convene in February 2005, and the GELC will have prominent participation in the event.

GELC Honorary Committee Members
-- Scott McNealy, Chairman and 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)

GELC 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

-- Terrence B. Verity, CIO, Seneca College, Toronto, Canada
-- Edward Walker, CEO, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.


-- Jacqueline Cheng, Chief Executive Officer, Hong Kong Education City, Hong Kong

-- Kehong Wang, Professor, Department of Computer Science & Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Sun's Global Education and Learning Community Mission Statement

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

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer (TM)" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com/ .

NOTE: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

CONTACT: Kristen Hyland of Sun Microsystems, Inc., + 1-650-786-3007, or kristen.hyland@sun.com.


Source: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

CONTACT: Kristen Hyland of Sun Microsystems, Inc., + 1-650-786-3007, or
kristen.hyland@sun.com

Web site: http://sun.com/


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