Eliot Miranda has posted some exciting news - he is working at Qwaq to develop Cog, a fast Smalltalk VM for Croquet. The VM will dynamically compile Smalltalk bytecodes to machine code transparently to the programmer, and execute this machine code instead of interpreting bytecode. He expects to have an initial release within a year which should execute pure Smalltalk code some 10 to 20 times faster than the current Squeak VM. The new VM will be released under the Qwaq open source licence (MIT-compatible).

Eliot will be posting notes on his progress and design decisions on his blog, and notes that the VM is to be released under the Qwaq open source licence. He’s looking to maintain compatability with the existing Croquet VM, Hydra, and Slang plugins. His first post gives lots of interesting details of work done so far, and his future plans.

Eliot is a long-time Smalltalker, having worked on VisualWorks for many years with a focus on VM development, and has recently been working with Gilad Bracha at Cadence.

The Mid-Hudson Valley Linux User Group will get the opportunity on 4th June to hear about a range of educational tools running on Squeak, including: Seaside, Scratch, Croquet and Etoys. Joe Apuzzo will discuss his experience teaching 60 kids from 3th grade to 5th math and science (all within 15 minutes per group).

Find out more at the website.

Andreas Raab writes on the mailing list that:

In its ongoing commitment to Open Source, Qwaq has decided to release the first multi-core capable Croquet VM under the MIT license.

Hydra VM is a virtual machine capable of running multiple Croquet images side-by-side, therefore being able to effectively utilize multi-core CPUs. Hydra VM is still in an early phase of development, but given the (very successful) early results, Qwaq has decided to make it available to general public in the hope that other people will help Igor [Stasenko] to make further progress in developing Hydra VM.

Source code and binaries for Windows can be found at the Qwaq website.

Well I couldn’t resist. Aaron E. Walsh sent out an invitation to the Squeak – Croquet communities for an ad-hoc Immersive Education Meeting. The Boston Digital Summit held in January covered the Education Grid, this meeting was a chance to review this information for those that were not able to make it to the summit.

Second Life was quite an experience. I had to sign up and go through some training, figure out how to get to Sun’s virtual auditorium and sit down. It was quite amusing to see some people show up on stage and not know how to sit down either, so I didn’t feel so bad. Maybe I should have spent more time in the training.

Aaron, reviewed the details of the Education Grid. The Grid is an education content virtual repository focused on interoperability, standards, and quality educational content. The goal is to provide standards that allow content to be developed to operate in different virtual worlds. These standards must be open source to ensure that content can be made freely available.

Content is just a piece of the puzzle in education. Educators also need tools to be able to evaluate the progress of students. There are a number of general tools that should be developed and made available in a consistent way for each offering. Aaron mentioned, “While it is possible to record everything that happens in a virtual world there is no way an educator could watch everything a student did in an activity that might take 2 hours.” Tools that allow educators to evaluate raw data, to assess progress and to track grades, and to create content are essential.

Quality content will be assured by having a Peer Review of offerings before the become part of the grid. The peers will be selected from the community and people with special expertise will be sought to make sure that the education goals are met, the content is accurate, standards are followed, and licensing is compatible to be a part of the grid.

Licensing and interoperability were the major concerns once Aaron opened the floor to questions. Ownership of the content was also discussed. Aaron mentioned that a not-for-profit organization would own the grid, but that the grid would be virtual and would be hosted by multiple organizations. I’m not sure there was a full answer about the ownership of the content. I would have suggested that copyright stay with the author or developing organization, and that the grid would receive unlimited rights to distribute the content, much in the same way were are trying to organize the Squeak community.

Well I ran out of time but Aaron did a very nice job of wrapping it up just a few minutes over. Thank you! The concept is really a terrific idea. I hope that our communities will join together and support developing freely available virtual world educational materials. Aaron mentioned that other meetings will be held in Croquet, I look forward to that. I hope to see you there. Hopefully that meeting will be just as well attended as the SL meeting.

We reported earlier that Qwaq received funding, well today Qwaq announced that it is hiring. They are looking for a Software Quality Engineer and a Senior Unix System Administrator. Qwaq builds secure 3d virtual worlds for business collaboration that is written in Squeak and Croquet. It is very exciting to watch this company grow. We will be watching.

From Aaron E. Walsh:

Happy New Year, everyone. As we enter 2008 I’m happy to announce that the Boston Digital Media Summit (next weekend) is focused on Immersive Education and will feature Croquet in several sessions (see the schedule of events below; Julian’s keynote is on Day 1 — January 12th).

Please join us if you’re in the Boston area or would like to make a trip for the event. The news release is below, and I’ve attached the PDF version as well.
It’s also in HTML format along with related news items at:

http://ImmersiveEducation.org/#NEWS

The Summit schedule of events has been set, which you can also see at:

http://mediagrid.org/summit/ (main page)
http://mediagrid.org/summit/program.html (schedule of events)

Best regards,
Aaron

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Immersive Education the focus of 2008 Boston Summit
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High quality PDF and Web versions: http://MediaGrid.org/#NEWS
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BOSTON, MA – January 03, 2008 – The 2008 Boston Digital Media Summit will be held at Boston College on January 12th and 13th. The two-day Summit is focused entirely on Immersive Education and is sponsored by the Grid Institute, Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College, and Federation of American Scientists (FAS) with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Educators, researchers, administrators and students from Boston College, Boston Public Schools, Amherst College, Federation of American Scientists, MIT Media Lab, Harvard University, Duke University, United States Department of Education, Johnson & Wales University, NASA, Sun Microsystems, Synthespian Studios, and Computerworld will give a series of presentations, panel discussions and workshops that provide an in-depth overview of Immersive Education and how virtual worlds and game-based learning technologies are used in and out of the classroom today. Immersive Education Day at Harvard University was a precursor to the 2008 Boston Digital Media Summit.

Immersive Education (http://ImmersiveEducation.org) combines interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, 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. Immersive Education is developed by the Immersive Education Initiative, 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 worlds and game-based learning and training systems.

The two-day Summit is open to the public and concludes with an “Avatar Party”
social event that features a unique mixed-reality magic show. Teachers, trainers, administrators and students are encouraged to attend both days of the Summit to participate in open discussion periods that follow the scheduled presentations, panel discussions, break-out sessions, and roundtables. The Summit features hands-on workshops and demonstrations of virtual worlds, interactive learning games, and innovative educational technologies.

Following is a partial list of the presentations, panel discussions and workshops scheduled for the Summit. Visit http://ImmersiveEducation.org for a complete schedule of events and to register for the Summit:

* Enabling the Age of Immersive Education
* Virtual Worlds for Insurrection and Revolution in Education
* School 2.0 and Immersive Education
* K-12: Challenges and Rewards of Immersive Education
* Game-changing Immersive Education Paradigms
* Second Life, Croquet and Wonderland as Immersive Education Platforms
* Building the Education Grid: By Educators for Educators
* Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll: Video Games as Learning Tools?!
* HELP! Communities of Support for Teachers, Students and Families
* From User to Creator: Building as a Tool of Empowerment
* Pedagogy, Assessment, and Learning Outcomes
* Beautiful and Brainy: The Future of Immersive Education
* Eye Candy: State of the Art Virtual Worlds and Video Games
* Learning Games for K-12
* Avatar Party and Mixed-Reality Magic Show

About Immersive Education
Immersive Education (http://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 and Immersive Education visit http://MediaGrid.org and http://ImmersiveEducation.org

–
Boston College: http://bc.edu
Media Grid: http://MediaGrid.org
Immersive Education: http://ImmersiveEducation.org Personal page: http://gridinstitute.com/people/aew/

The Federation of American Scientists and the Kauffman Foundation are backing the Boston College’s own Aaron E. Walsh efforts to build virtual reality education content for virtual worlds like Croquet, Second Life and Project Wonderland.

Walsh has been focusing on delivering content to children with disabilities through the Grid Institute an organization that promotes the use of a public utility grid to develop and deliver high-end virtual reality and 3-D simulation programs.

This new multi-million dollar project called Immersive Education promises to bring together an international group of educators, researchers and companies along with foundations to develop standards and technologies that will enable a much richer interactive 3-D educational experience.

The award winning Immersive Education software, now on it’s third generation was originally only available for university students. The project was started in 2004 at Boston College. The software is now available as an open standard for educational software. Visit immersiveeducation.org for more information.

Full speed ahead. With the rise of virtual technology and a huge lead in the virtual workspace market, Qwaq pulls even further ahead with a successful first round funding raising $7 Million from Alloy Ventures and Storm Ventures.

Qwaq Forums the company’s first commercial product is built on Croquet and open source virtual world development platform written in Squeak, an open source version of Smalltalk. The work that Qwaq has put into forums is exceptional. The platform takes the concept of a virtual world with all the benefits of immediate communications and immersive visual feed back and integrates it with important business technologies that allow users to truly collaborate in real time. They have taken Croquet and made it work for business.

The news is really terrific, not only for Qwaq and their customers, but for our open source communities as well. Qwaq continues to share code and support both Croquet and Squeak, not to mention hiring some of the best and brightest Smalltalkers, something I’m sure Qwaq will continue to do with this new funding.

Congratulations Qwaq!!

Net Neutrality is not just about money. It’s not just about power. It’s not about just about limiting what you can view. Or censoring your voice and freedom. IT’S ABOUT ALL THOSE THINGS!!

Are you ready to have FOX news streaming to your computer with lightning speeds and MSNBC unable to connect? Do you want to see a world where to get Google search you have to pay a premium fee to your ISP? Do you think it is ok to have to pay every ISP to carry the traffic from your website? “No, I’m sorry you can’t see my web site from there, I didn’t pay AT&T, so they censor my website from their customers! Oh you are not an AT&T subscriber, well they must support the traffic in your area with their cables, I’m sorry.”

Does anyone really think this is a good idea?? It’s no wonder Google is looking for way to get off the wire! The internet is a public utility, and it needs to be protected from schemes that will do nothing but squash your freedoms, create huge monopolies, and destroy our new electronic economy. Somebody should do something about this!!

Check out NNSquad! NNSquad was started by PFIR but look who else showed up! Bruce Schneier and David Reed! I couldn’t be happier to see these two names on the list.

Bruce is a cryptography hero, he speaks about common sense in security. He is not afraid to take a controversial stance and speak truth to power. If you have not signed up for his news letter, consider it, it is very interesting reading.

Of course everyone here knows who David Reed is. David is one of the principal architects of Croquet. He is also very well known for his work on Social Networks. If anyone knows about the Internet and it’s implications it is Daivd.

It’s exciting to see some movement around this issue. It is definitely time to make some noise before we all wake up and the world as we know it today has already been bought and sold. Get involved, say informed, support NNSquad!

Pretty cool stuff!!