BOSTON, MA - December 2, 2009 - The Immersive Education Initiative today announced that early registration for the 2010 Boston Summit is now open. Boston College will host the Immersive Education 2010 Boston Summit from April 23-25 through special arrangement with the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College. Organized specifically for educators, researchers, and administrators, the three-day conference consists of presentations, panel discussions, break-out sessions and workshops that provide attendees with an in-depth overview of immersive learning platforms and technologies.

The Summit will feature new and emerging virtual worlds, learning games, educational simulations, mixed/augmented reality, and related teaching tools, techniques, technologies, standards and best practices. The Education Grid, Project Wonderland, Second Life, realXtend, Cobalt, and Open Simulator are among the immersive learning technologies that will be featured. 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.

Early Registration

Early registration is open until January 31 at the discounted rate of $199 USD (U.S. dollars) per seat. Seating is limited to 300 attendees, and is expected to reach capacity during the early registration period (a strict limit of 5 seats per registrant applies). After January 31st the full registration rate of $275 USD (U.S. dollars) per seat applies.

Speakers and Panelists

Speakers and panelists from past Immersive Education Initiative Summits include faculty, researchers, and administrators from The Grid Institute, Boston College, Loyola Marymount University, M.I.T. Media Lab, Harvard University, United States Department of Education, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Federation of American Scientists (FAS), The Smithsonian Institution, Sun Microsystems, Duke University, Southeast Kansas Education Service Center, Immersive Education High School, South Park Elementary, Cornell University, Amherst College, New Media Consortium, Kauffman Foundation, Boston Library Consortium, Montana State University, Boston Media High School, realXtend (Finland), The MOFET Institute (Israel), University of Aizu (Japan), 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.

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, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, which is growing at the rate of approximately 2 new members every day.

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