Media Grid News

iED 2011 EARLY REGISTRATION OPENS
Immersive Education Initiative 2011 iED Summit

World's leading immersive learning experts and practitioners convene May 13-15 in Boston

BOSTON, MA - October 20, 2010 - The Immersive Education Initiative today opened early registration for iED SUMMIT 2011 ("iED 2011"). Boston College will host the three-day iED Summit from May 13-15 through special arrangement with the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College. Early registration, and associated individual and group discounts, will close this December.

Speakers at past iED Summits have included faculty, researchers, and administrators from The Grid Institute, Boston College, Harvard University (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT Media Lab, The Smithsonian Institution, Loyola Marymount University, Stanford University, United States Department of Education, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Duke University, Temple University, Southeast Kansas Education Service Center, Immersive Education High School, Cornell University, Amherst College, Kauffman Foundation, Boston Library Consortium, Montana State University, South Park Elementary School, Boston Media High School, Sun Microsystems, Turner Broadcasting, Open Wonderland Foundation, realXtend (Finland), The MOFET Institute (Israel), University of Aizu (Japan), Keio University (Japan), National University of Singapore, Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), University of Essex (UK), Coventry University (UK), Giunti Labs (Italy) and European Learning Industry Group, Open University (UK), and more.

iED 2011 Overview

iED Summits are official Immersive Education Initiative conferences organized specifically for educators, researchers, and administrators. iED Summits consist of presentations, panel discussions, break-out sessions and workshops that provide attendees with an in-depth overview of immersive learning platforms, technologies and cutting-edge research from around the world. iED Summits feature new and emerging virtual worlds, learning games, educational simulations, mixed/augmented reality, and related teaching tools, techniques, technologies, standards and best practices.

The world's leading experts in virtual worlds, learning games, educational simulations, and mixed/augmented reality convene May 13-15 in Boston for iED 2011. Attendance is open to the global education community.

iED 2011 will feature The Education Grid (TEG), Rocket World, Open Wonderland, realXtend, Open Cobalt, Open Simulator, immersive CAVES, mixed/augmented reality, and freely available open source alternatives to Second Life. Members of the Initiative's open file format, library, psychology, mixed reality, and K-12 (kindergarten through high school) groups will give special presentations and workshops at the Summit.

Papers, Posters, Workshops, Panels, Presentations, Demos and Outliers

Members of the global academic community are invited to submit abstracts for refereed papers, posters, workshops, panels, general presentations, demos, and outliers (novel late-breaking research and technology).

• Abstracts for refereed papers deadline: December 13, 2010.
  
• Abstracts for presentations, posters, panels and workshops deadline: January 20, 2011.
  
• Abstracts for demos and outliers deadline: April 01, 2011.

Details, deadlines and submission instructions are available through the official iED Summit website.

Thousands of Members Worldwide

The Immersive Education Initiative is a non-profit international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Thousands of faculty, teachers, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative.

About Immersive Education
Immersive Education (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, Immersive Education or the Education Grid visit:
MediaGrid.org, ImmersiveEducation.org and TheEducationGrid.org