Scientific
Applications:
CAL-(IT)2 & SDSC BRING
VISUALIZATION CAPABILITIES TO STUDENTS
The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) dedicated the Visualization
Center at the Preuss School UCSD, a local middle/high school, to give teachers
and students a dynamic and engaging tool for teaching and learning in Earth
sciences, biology and other classes.
The center will be hooked up to a high-performance grid network that will
permit students to interact with university faculty and graduate students and
work collaboratively with them on research projects.
"This new center puts our school at the vanguard of new technologies that
are
reshaping and improving the way we teach, especially in the sciences," said
Doris Alvarez, Principal of the Preuss School UCSD, which is located on the
university's La Jolla campus.
"We are deploying this technology years before it will reach most high
schools, and we expect that by engaging students early on in the excitement of
research, it will inspire more students to go into math, engineering and
science-related careers."
The Visualization Center is funded as part of the National Science
Foundation's OptIPuter project, an award made to UCSD and five other campuses
in Fall 2002.
The OptIPuter project brought together three technology institutions
affiliated with UCSD that helped build the visualization center:
- The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
- The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
[Cal-(IT)2], a partnership between UCSD and UC Irvine
- The Visualization Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The initial subject matter on Earth sciences was designed by researchers at
Scripps and the Geology Department of San Diego State University (SDSU).
The hardware and software installed in the visualization center has until
now
only been deployed at a limited number of universities. The GeoWall system
consists of two projectors, a 7'x7' screen that permits three-dimensional
viewing with a very bright image (3,000 lumens), and a high-end personal
computer. Inside the PC are two graphics cards -- one that accelerates the
display of lines and polygons, another that accelerates the display of
volumes.
Classes will have access to hundreds of advanced software programs,
including
some that will be developed by SDSC, Cal-(IT)2 and other UCSD units including
Scripps.
"The equipment and software are state of the art," said SDSC Director of
Visualization Mike Bailey, who designed the facility with Rozeanne Steckler,
Director of Education at SDSC.
"As technology evolves and as we get feedback from teachers and students,
we
will be continuously fine-tuning the system and building new software to keep
it state of the art and to ensure that the technological innovation yields a
faster, deeper learning experience in the classroom."
The center will be linked via optical fiber to the OptIPuter testbed, now
under construction on the UCSD campus. The OptIPuter proposal included the
Preuss School UCSD as a key testbed for its outreach and education strategy.
"The Preuss facility is powerful as a standalone educational tool, but, as
part of the OptIPuter, it will provide a virtual-reality gateway to the
world," said Cal-(IT)2 director Larry Smarr, a professor of Computer Science
and Engineering at UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering and principal
investigator on the OptIPuter project.
"Eventually, students at the Preuss School will be able to interact in real
time with images stored thousands of miles away -- everything from a fly-over
of the surface of Mars to navigating deep inside a human cell."
The Preuss School is a public middle and high school dedicated to providing
an
intensive college preparatory education for low-income students who will
become the first in their families to graduate from college.
The school was named in recognition of a gift from Peter and Peggy Preuss,
their son Peter, and the Preuss Family Foundation. Peter Preuss received his
Master's degree in mathematics from UCSD in 1968 and went on to found
Integrated Software Systems Corp. (ISSCO), a San Diego-based company that was
then the first and only software firm specializing in computer graphics.
"It is gratifying that the Preuss School is now positioned at the forefront
of
this revolution that will harness high-performance computing and visualization
for the benefit of education," said Preuss, who sold ISSCO in 1986 to Computer
Associates.
"This is a wonderful opportunity for students to get hands-on experience
not
only with today's technology, but with the technology of the future."
Researchers at SDSC, Scripps and SDSU are working with teachers at the
school
to create a curriculum based on the new system's capabilities. "More than half
of our PhDs in engineering in the U.S. are foreign nationals, and many now
return home after receiving their education," said Scripps Deputy Director
John Orcutt.
"This technology will engender excitement in science, providing the Preuss
School with a major opportunity to attract young people too often left
behind."
At Wednesday's dedication ceremony, science teacher Jennifer Krummel and
her
students will use the system for an introduction to Earth sciences, taking
students on a tour of major geological and other Earth features with a 3D
fly-over. "This sort of technology is the future of education," said
Krummel.
"My students and I are very excited that our school has the honor of being
the
first school to put this technology into action. These students probably would
not have access to this cutting-edge science in the schools they come from. I
hope that this makes them more interested in science in general."
The OptIPuter project has several other education projects in the planning
stages. These include linking the newest undergraduate college at UCSD, Sixth
College, to the OptIPuter testbed, enabling high-performance exploration of
projects consistent with its theme of Culture, Art and Technology.
In suburban Chicago, the Lincoln elementary school, in collaboration with
the
University of Illinois at Chicago and its Electronic Visualization Laboratory,
is developing plans for classroom-based science inquiry activities using
remote data sets within the science domains featured in the OptIPuter proposal
geophysics and neuroscience.
http://www.calit2.net
http://www.sdsc.edu
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu
http://www.sdsu.edu
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