Sun picks Kerala for e-learning center

BANGALORE: Sun Microsystems, Inc. has named Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITMK) as a Sun Regional Center of Excellence (COE) for E-Learning. The first regional COE selected in India, IIITM-K becomes one of the four universities in the world, to be recognized by Sun and the academic community as leading edge researchers in e-learning technologies.

IIITM-K has empowered students and staff to study when they like, where they like and how they like by putting in place an advanced e-learning programme called Education Grid. With the Education Grid, students can take classes from anywhere, logging onto the Internet to listen to and review their lectures, and holding tutorial discussions via an online forum. The Education Grid is based on TeN's Academic E-learning application, running on Sun's servers.

K Srivatsan, Director, IIITM-K "This institution is honoured to be selected as a Sun Centre of Excellence. We see our collaboration with Sun as key to fully utilising emerging technologies to further our research efforts. Our work will continue to push the boundaries of e-learning, given our commitment to the Knowledge Campus concept, where a university utilises enabling technologies to focus on knowledge production."

IIITM-K was the natural choice as the first India Regional COE. The research IIITMK conducts exemplifies the principles of Sun's COE program - innovations that bring real world results," said Andrew Lim, Director - Asia South, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "This further collaboration will complement the excellent foundation we have built together in IIITMK." he added.

"Working with IIITM-K we're combining the top minds in Computing with the industry's best technology and we are confident that these projects will see great success," said Vishal Dhupar, Director Sales, Sun Microsystems India Pvt Ltd, "Sun is focused on advancing Grid Computing technology to help transform critical university research into future products and competitive advantages that will affect not only academia, but also the commercial realm, as well as human lives."

As a concept, the Knowledge Campus focuses on leveraging technologies and products from academic institutions around the world in the areas of e-learning, front-end portals, library automation and digital asset management. IIITMK, as a newly named Sun Regional Centre of Excellence, will have a key leadership role in support of the Knowledge Campus, promoting the sharing and collaboration in the use of technologies, developing content, defining standards and building best-of-breed pedagogical practices.

IIITM-K’s footstep in the research of grid computing would leverage great potentials in the new era of high power computing and e-learning and Sun Grid Engine technologies will enable efficient sharing and aggregation of heterogeneous, geographically distributed and dynamically available resources. IIITM-K will soon be setting up a Global Data-Intensive Grid test bed and open it to the Grid collaboration community" said Elizabeth Sherly, Dean, IIITM-K.