Immersive Education Initiative receives $1.2 Million STEM donation from the John C. Ford Program

Hello fellow Croquet developers. Earlier today the following announcement
(below) went out about our K12 and college STEM program. This is related to the
question I posted here about using using Blender for authoring Croquet content
(our K12 and college students will be using Blender, and we're soon going to
start building the immersive STEM learning environments mentioned in the
announcement below). Thank you all for the detailed replies to my Blender
question; I received a number of replied directly and will soon reply to those
as well.

If you're interested in being involved with this STEM project please don't
hesitate to contact me (please use the contact form on
http://ImmersiveEducation.org so that I'll be sure to get your message). The
HTML and PDF versions of this announcement are online (with all other news and
announcements) at

   http://ImmersiveEducation.org/#NEWS


Best regards, Aaron

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Immersive Education Initiative receives $1.2 Million
STEM donation from the John C. Ford Program
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High quality PDF and Web versions: http://MediaGrid.org/#NEWS
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BOSTON, MA - March 11, 2008 - On behalf of the Immersive Education Initiative,
the Grid Institute has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding and Commitment
with The John C. Ford Program's Global Education Initiative [Ford Program-GEI
Project] to formalize a joint collaboration to further shared objectives,
including accelerating and strengthening the acquisition of Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills, problem-solving and creative thinking
skills in underserved K-12 and college students, worldwide; achieving and
sustaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and UNESCO Education
For All goals; and using innovative technology and Internet solutions for
building healthy, sustainable communities and increased access to critical
knowledge and information, worldwide.

Under the terms of the agreement, The Ford Program-GEI Project will donate 67
STEM programs and associated learning materials and technologies to the
Immersive Education Initiative under an Open Educational Resources (OER)
Creative Commons license. The donation, valued at $1.2 Million USD, was
developed with funding by the United States Department of Commerce, W.K. Kellogg
Foundation, Dallas Foundation, COMP USA, EDS Foundation, Bank of America
Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, Chase Bank and private investors.

The donation provides the Immersive Education Initiative with a solid base of
STEM programs from which a range of next-generation applied engineering
immersive learning experiences will be developed.

The Ford Program-GEI Project is a 501(c)(3) international NGO donor whose
mission is to help build global capacity and healthy, sustainable communities by
strengthening the educational, economic, and environmental infrastructures of
underserved communities, worldwide. The Ford Program-GEI Project has developed
and is a partner in the Global Science-Engineering TeleCenters Programme, an
alliance of private-public partnerships representing 40 developing countries and
over $1.2 Billion USD leveraged assets to deliver quality STEM programs, and
teacher/student training to all government and municipal-operated public schools
in participating developing countries. To this end, The Ford Program-GEI Project
will grant to the Grid Institute the following donations for use by the
Immersive Education Initiative:

1. GEI STEM Programs, which includes 67 interdisciplinary K12-College STEM
problem-solving programs developed by leading educators and engineers with The
Ford Program-GEI Project, including electronic audio-data [voice and visual]
curricula, lesson plans, training materials and templates, focused on 12 areas
of science vital to building healthy, sustainable communities: water
purification; environmental preservation; alternative energy; prevention of
communicable diseases, including HIV/AIDS, waterborne, childhood and other
communicable diseases; energy flow through ecosystems;
eco-design-eco-engineering; wastewater sanitation and treatment; agricultural
science; irrigation; global warming and climatology; aerospace science and
technology; and nanotechnology.

2. New Interactions Applied-Learning Pedagogy, which connects, empowers,
motivates and accelerates the learning of integrated STEM and problem-solving
skills by underserved youth, K-12-College.

3. Unlimited Training On The Interactions Applied-Learning Pedagogy.

4. Global eConsultant-Mentors Program, with templates for connecting leading
engineers, educators and executives to mentor disadvantaged, under-served and
vulnerable youth worldwide, and usage of the Global Science-Engineering Network.

5. Four Micro-Entrepreneurship Programs, including Business Plan Development,
Marketing Plan Development, Customer-Relations Development, and
Business-to-Business Sales Development Programs.

Online access to the donated STEM programs and materials will be staged out over
the year 2008. Through the http://ImmersiveEducation.org web site, Immersive
Education Initiative members will have online access to approximately 25 of the
STEM programs on May 30, 2008, with additional STEM programs to be available
online on December 30, 2008.




About Immersive Education

Immersive Education (http://ImmersiveEducation.org) combines interactive 3D
graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat
(Voice over IP/VoIP), Web cameras (webcams) and rich digital media with
collaborative online course environments and classrooms. Immersive Education
gives participants a sense of "being there" even when attending a class or
training session in person isn't possible, practical, or desirable, which in
turn provides educators and students with the ability to connect and communicate
in a way that greatly enhances the learning experience. Unlike traditional
computer-based learning systems, Immersive Education is designed to immerse and
engage students in the same way that today's best video games grab and keep the
attention of players. Immersive Education supports self-directed learning as
well as collaborative group-based learning environments that can be delivered
over the Internet or using fixed-media such as CD-ROM and DVD. Shorter
mini-games and interactive lessons can be injected into larger bodies of course
material to further heighten and enrich the Immersive Education experience.


About the Media Grid

The Media Grid is a public utility for digital media. Based on new and emerging
distributed computational grid technologies, the Media Grid builds upon existing
Internet and Web standards to create a unique network optimized for digital
media delivery, storage, and processing. As an on-demand public computing
utility, a range of software programs and Web sites can use the Media Grid for
delivery and storage of rich media content, media processing, and computing
power. The Media Grid is an open and extensible platform that enables a wide
range of applications not possible with the traditional Internet alone,
including: Massive Media on Demand (MMoD); Interactive digital cinema on demand;
Immersive Education and distance learning; Truly immersive multiplayer games and
Virtual Reality (VR); Hollywood movie and film rendering, special effects, and
composition; Real-time rendering of high resolution graphics; Real-time
visualization of complex weather patterns; Real-time protein modeling and drug
design; Telepresence, telemedicine, and telesurgery; Vehicle and aircraft design
and simulation; Visualization of scientific and medical data.

The Grid Institute leads the design and development of the global Media Grid
through the MediaGrid.org open standards organization in collaboration with
industry, academia, and governments from around the world.


To learn more about the Media Grid and Immersive Education visit
http://MediaGrid.org and http://ImmersiveEducation.org


###


--
Boston College: http://bc.edu
Media Grid: http://MediaGrid.org
Immersive Education: http://ImmersiveEducation.org
Personal page: http://gridinstitute.com/people/aew/

Hello Croquet researchers:

Please consider attending the launch of the American
Education Research Association's Special Interest
Group on virtual environments.
 
The mission of the Applied Research in Virtual
Environments for Learning (ARVEL) SIG is to steward a
robust community of educators, scholars, and
practitioners dedicated toward research in and on
virtual 3D environments.

Launch Party----
Monday, March 24, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Hilton New York - Petit Trianon, 3rd Floor
1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019
(212) 586-7000 - http://tinyurl.com/2bttwd/ 

Business meeting----
Wednesday, March 26, 6:15 to 7:45 pm
Crowne Plaza Hotel Times Square
Broadway Ballroom, Act IV, 4th Floor
1605 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
(800) 243-6969 - http://manhattan.crowneplaza.com/ 

Professor Chris Dede of Harvard University will
keynote the March 26th business meeting. He will
present "Lessons Learned about Virtual Worlds for
Learning."

Flyer:
http://arvelsig.com/ArvelSIG_08_flyer.pdf

Contact SIG officers for more information:
Jonathon Richter, CATE, [hidden email]
Lisa Dawley, BSU, [hidden email]
Jeremy Kemp, SJSU, [hidden email]

www.arvelsig.com