Education and Grid Services

Geoffrey FoxProfessor of Computer Science, Informatics, Physics

Community Grids LaboratoryPervasive Technology Laboratories

Indiana University Bloomington IN 47404

gcf@indiana.eduhttp://www.infomall.orghttp://www.grid2002.org

Some Players with Education Grid like Technologies IMS and ADL in the USA have set standards for some of the

special learning metadata structures CHEF (Michigan) and Colloquia (Bangor) are academic

groupware projects aimed at education• Access Grid from Argonne is Audio-Video conferencing

Sakai and OKI are Mellon Foundation projects implementing electronic learning capabilities

Blackboard and WebCT are popular (some places) academic e-learning support systems• Several inhouse efforts like OnCourse at Indiana

Docent, Topclass etc. are learning content management systems LCMS mainly selling to corporate training market

Centra, Interwise, Placeware, WebEx, GrooveNetworks are well known collaboration systems that might support distance learning/tutoring and participatory education

Grids in a Nutshell Grids are by definition the best of HPCC, Web Services, Agents,

Distributed Objects, Peer-to-peer networks, Collaborative environments

Grid applications are typically zero or one very large supercomputers, lots of conventional machines, with unlimited data and/or people supporting an electronic (virtual) community• Data sources and people are latency tolerant …• Multiple supercomputers (or clusters) on same Grid as in

TeraGrid/ETF largely for sharing of data and by people Grids are supported by Global Grid Forum, W3C, OASIS …

setting standards Grids are a “service oriented architecture” hiding irrelevant

details• Services are electronic resources communicating by messages• Message based architecture gives scalable loosely coupled

component model

Information/Knowledge Grids Distributed (10’s to 1000’s) of data sources (instruments,

file systems, curated databases …) Data Deluge: 1 (now) to 100’s petabytes/year (2012)

• Moore’s law for Sensors Possible filters assigned dynamically (on-demand)

• Run image processing algorithm on telescope image• Run Gene sequencing algorithm on compiled data

Needs decision support front end with “what-if” simulations

Metadata (provenance) critical to annotate data

Integrate across experiments as in multi-wavelength astronomy

Data Deluge comes from pixels/year available

Raw (HPC) Resources

Middleware

Database

PortalServices

SystemServices

SystemServices

SystemServices

Application Service

Libraries

UserServices

“Core”Grid

Typical Grid Architecture

Application Service

Application Service

Re-use

Re-use

ApplicationCustomization

Each service should beable to run independently on separate machines

Some Technical Issues All IT approaches support systems with multiple

capabilities• They often reveal and/or standardize interfaces

• They could be different method calls, Java classes, or Web/Grid service interfaces

We will ONLY use the word Service when interface can be efficiently accessed by messages with service as an isolated single service• Grids build systems from message-based services

Module A

Module B

Method Calls1 to 10 microseconds

Service A

Service B

Messages

10 to 1000 millisecond latency

Capabilities often called services even if NOT using a Service Oriented Architecture

Message-based or Method-based Method-based interfaces are most efficient but can only

be run in that fashion in a single monolithic implementation• One service with multiple ports • i.e. each interface might be accessed via message but

all capabilities need to be co-located• Technologies like Java RMI allow distributed objects

but requires serialization (often non trivial) and unclear if application supports performance loss

“Message-based services” support standards and distributed deployment with easy use of standards compliant services from different implementers.

Sakai

The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools. 

Sakai builds on OKI – Open Knowledge Initiative – interfaces These Open Service Interface Definitions were developed

outside the Grid process but appear to have overlaps with many Web service and Grid standards• Note OGSA-DAI, Security, Workflow, WS-Notification,

Grid monitoring, WebDAV overlaps Although they are called “services”, I think they are being

developed initially inside a (single) Java container Does not address real-time collaboration except for chat

Portals These are used rather inconsistently for

• A general term for the whole user experience with an interface to multiple capabilities

• Narrow specification of certain capabilities such as customization, server side support for web page generation, aggregation of document fragments (one per service), security

• Broad specification to include both user interface and services Note portals tend to be monolithic frameworks because that’s

how one used to build such things• Jetspeed and CHEF’s modification of it are both frameworks

Portals need to be broken up into distributed message based services for security, customization, layout, rendering• Shouldn’t invest too much in today’s frameworks although they have

some wonderful features However Portals do encourage “component” model for user

interfaces and so this fits service model so every service can be packaged with its (document fragment) user interface• So portlets are good even if containers primitive

OGCEOGCEConsortium

The OGCE Computing Grid Portal

• Provides Portlets for– Management of user proxy

certificates– Remote file Management via

Grid FTP– News/Message systems

• for collaborations– Grid Event/Logging service– Access to OGSA services – Access to directory services– Specialized Application Factory

access• Distributed applications• Workflow

– Access to Metadata Index tools• User searchable index

– Real Time Collaboration• Audio/Video Conferencing

OGCEOGCEConsortium

Example Capability: File Management

• Grid FTP portlet– Allow User to manage remote file spaces– Uses stored proxy for

authentication– Upload and download files– Third party file transfer

• Request that GridFTP server A send a file to GridFTP server B

• Does not involve traffic through portal server

Portal Server

User

GridFTPServer A GridFTP

Server B

GridFTPService

1 of many Portlets

Jetspeed

Education Grids Education Grids can be considered from at least two

points of view 1) Exploiting e-Science and other relevant research

government or business grids whose resources can be adapted for use in education• Opportunity to make education more “real” and to give

students an idea what scientific research is like 2) Support the virtual organization that is the teacher

and learner community• Actually this community is heterogeneous with teachers,

learners, parents, employers, publishers, informal education, university staff ….

Build the Education Grid as a Grid of Grids

Education Grid

Inservice TeachersPreservice TeachersSchool of Education Teacher Educator

Grids

Informal Education(Museum)

Grid

Student/Parent …Community Grid

Science GridsBioinformatics

Particle PhysicsEarth Science …….

Typical Science GridService such as ResearchDatabase or simulation

Transformed by Grid Filterto form suitable for education

Learning Managementor LMS Grid

Publisher Grid

Campus orEnterprise

AdministrativeGrid

Education as a Grid of Grids

DigitalLibrary

Grid

Education Grid of Grids Services in an Education Grid fall into three classes 1) Those that special to Education such as quiz (as in

IMS), learning plan or grading services 2) Those that are important but can be taken from

other Grids such as collaboration and security 3) Those that come from other Grids and are

refactored for education• The simulation is reduced in size

• The bioinformatics database interface is simplified

e-ScienceResource

Filter Education Grid View

of e-Science Resource

Education Grid

Database Database

ResearchSimulations

Analysis and VisualizationPortal

RepositoriesFederated Databases

Data Filter

Services

Field Trip DataStreaming Data

Sensors

?DiscoveryServices

SERVOGridResearch Education

CustomizationServices

From Research

to Education

EducationGrid ComputerFarm

Geoscience Research andEducation Grids

What to do?• Develop a planning grid of interested parties• Grow a teacher and teacher education grid

– This would largely be a community/collaboration Grid• Develop prototypes such as Quarknet separating science and teaching

side into separate grids– Develop interface/transformational material

• Note we do not try to make a single seamless grid but rather multiple federated grids– Use bittorrent not GridFTP (or rather transform between them)– Supply education compute resources on demand– Make a deal with Google for free searches

• Develop the online instruments, databases, web pages, physics-based games, simulations that are science grids with educational transforms– Videos and MP3’s of Scientists in action

• Develop collaborative whiteboards/ video/ imagery/ chats/ white-papers/ experts-on-demand that form a community grid– Instant Messenger, audio/video conferencing– Content annotation critical

• Develop a hub linking multiple education-transformed science grids together

Undergroundfilm.org is/will be a community grid for educational film makers(run by Community Grids Laboratory)

Has viewer evaluation of contentWill offer services such as transforming formats

Digital object archives for animation etc.

http://www.yafro.com supports digital camera images (as on modern cell phones) and builds

community around discussion of this

Community Grid A/V Conferencing

SIP H323 Access Grid Native XGSPAdmire

Gateways convert to uniform XGSP Messaging

High Performance (RTP)and XML/SOAP and ..

Media ServersFilters

Session ServerXGSP-based Control

NaradaBrokeringAll Messaging

Use Multiple Media servers to scale to many codecs and manyversions of audio/video mixing

NB Scales asdistributed

WebServices

NaradaBrokering

Summary Grids are inevitably important for Education Grid of Grids interesting way to build “new Grids” that might be

accepted by skeptical participants and enhance re-use IMS has set data but not many service standards

• Partial step to interoperability Sakai is building modern (probably wonderful) open e-learning

capabilities but appears not to be a Grid/WS standards compliant service architecture

Current academic/commercial systems are successful but monolithic Opportunity to build service-based Education Grid Infrastructure

interacting with broad community (from Grids to WS to Schools of Education) exploiting other Grids

Can build collaboration – A/V Conferencing, Shared applications, groupware – in Grid/WS architecture

Critical to build on Community Grids as popularized in P2P networks Can develop best practice and tools to allow e-Science grids to be linked

to education Can encourage use of component-based portals