Teaching gets a “Second Life”

Imagine getting up in front of a classroom full of young students, and trying to keep their attention amidst all the electronic gadgets that students carry these days.

Taking the axiom “if you can’t beat them, join them” to heart, a new initiative is trying to create a learning platform that combines interactive 3D graphics, game and simulation technology, voice chat, and digital media with collaborative online classrooms.

The idea to make the classroom grab student in the same way that today’s video games grab and keep a player’s attention. So, instead of trying to compete against new technologies to maintain students’ attention, teachers use the technologies to their advantage, with tools similar to popular games such as Second Life.

Feature

SuperComputing 2010 comes to a close

Read on to get our impressions from SuperComputing 2010.

Cloud computing

Clouds are rising

Are grid-users interested in using cloud technologies?

Find out what StratusLab discovered when they surveyed over 200 people in grid.

Link of the week

Haiku winners

After rigorous scrutiny (otherwise known as “Hey, that sounds cool, I think I’ll publish it”), here are the winning entries from our first-ever computing haiku contest.