Education and Grid Services

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Education and Grid Services

• Geoffrey FoxProfessor of Computer Science,
  Informatics, Physics
• Community Grids Laboratory
• Pervasive Technology Laboratories
• Indiana University Bloomington IN 47404
• gcf_at_indiana.edu
• http//www.infomall.org
• http//www.grid2002.org

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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

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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

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Information/Knowledge Grids

• Distributed (10s to 1000s) of data sources
  (instruments, file systems, curated databases )
• Data Deluge 1 (now) to 100s petabytes/year
  (2012)
• Moores 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
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Each service should beable to run independently
on separate machines
Typical Grid Architecture
UserServices
Portal Services
Re-use
Application ServiceLibraries
ApplicationCustomization
Application Service
Application Service
Middleware
SystemServices
SystemServices
SystemServices
Re-use
CoreGrid
Raw (HPC) Resources
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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

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

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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

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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 thats how one used to build such things
• Jetspeed and CHEFs modification of it are both
  frameworks
• Portals need to be broken up into distributed
  message based services for security,
  customization, layout, rendering
• Shouldnt invest too much in todays 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

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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

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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

User
Portal Server
Jetspeed
1 of many Portlets
GridFTPService
GridFTP Server A
GridFTP Server B
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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

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Typical Science GridService such as
Research Database or simulation
Science Grids Bioinformatics Particle
Physics Earth Science .
Campus orEnterprise Administrative Grid
Transformed by Grid Filterto form suitable for
education
Education Grid
Publisher Grid
Learning Management or LMS Grid
Student/Parent Community Grid
Digital Library Grid
Informal Education (Museum) Grid
Inservice Teachers Preservice Teachers School
of Education Teacher Educator Grids
Education as a Grid of Grids
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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

Education Grid
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RepositoriesFederated Databases
Streaming Data
Sensors
Database
Database
Research
Education
SERVOGrid
Data FilterServices
Customization Services From Researchto Education
ResearchSimulations
Analysis and VisualizationPortal
EducationGrid Computer Farm
Geoscience Research and Education Grids
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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 MP3s 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-transform
  ed science grids together

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Undergroundfilm.org is/will be a community grid
for educational film makers (run by Community
Grids Laboratory) Has viewer evaluation of
content Will offer services such as transforming
formats Digital object archives for animation etc.
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http//www.yafro.com supports digital camera
images (as on modern cell phones) and builds
community around discussion of this
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Community Grid A/V Conferencing
Use Multiple Media servers to scale to many
codecs and many versions of audio/video mixing
WebServices
High Performance (RTP)and XML/SOAP and ..
NB Scales asdistributed
Gateways convert to uniform XGSP Messaging
NaradaBrokering
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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