Sessions devoted to education community and to outreach to new communities

Grids for Education and Outreach

Organized by: Geoffrey Fox Indiana University

Tuesday June 28 2005 Noon – 1.30pm and 2.30pm – 3.15pm

Presentations

Randy Ruchti, University of Notre Dame & National Science FoundationQuarkNet

William J. Frascella, Director Center for Mathematics Education Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana The Grid in Pre-College Science Education Reform: Bringing 21st Century Science into the High School Classroom

Al Kuslikis, American Indian Higher Education Consortium Tribal Colleges & Universities and Grid Computing

James Turner, Virginia Tech Building a Research and Education Grid in Africa

Abstract

This session consists of four talks addressing using Grids to enhance education. Randy Ruchti discusses QuarkNet which is a collaboration between Fermilab and the particle physics Grid activities (open Science Grid) to use the Grid to bring the excitement of physics research to schools. This example of Grids in support of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is built on by Bill Frascella who was director of ESIE (Elementary Secondary and Informal Education) component of EHR at NSF. Frascella has returned to Indiana University where he founded the Indiana Mathematics Initiative for middle schools. He explains how Grids can help bring resources such as virtual laboratories and science expertise to schools across the nation. The third talk comes from Al Kuslikis of AIHEC (American Indian Higher Education Consortium) who describes how Grids can help integrate Tribal Homelands into a broad community and in particular how e-Science is important for the Tribal Colleges. The final talk by James Turner of Virginia Tech describes the importance of Grids in developing technology, technologists and scientists in Africa. The initial effort is built around the netork of institutes forming the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)

Comments

The discussion after the last talk identified work by EGEE on Grids in Africa as described by Vincent Breton, CNRS Grid Activities in relation to Africa while this summary describes the potential interest of grids to address tropical diseases like malaria, going from drug discovery to drug delivery.