Physics, Engineering and Internetics A White Paper Participants Syracuse NPAC (lead research and infrastructure) Physics department (Course material and curricula development) Engineering and Compute Science College (Course material and curricula development) Education school (Outreach to CNY schools) IST(Assesment) Newhouse School (Multimedia design and production) WebWisdom.com (Deployed technology) MindTel (Deployed technology) Cornell Theory Center (Virtual Workshop Curricula) Engineering (Course material and curricula development) NCSA Alliance, NPACI EOT and Partners NCSA/Boston University -- (Linkage to important communities such as K-12 teachers, Coordination) Rice University (Minority Outreach) Trace Center, Wisconsin (Disabled Interface design) Selected Partners such as San Diego State Univ., New Mexico/Maui HPC Center, Houston (Internetics Curricula) Budget: $250K FY 1999 $2.8M FY20002001,2002 Breakdown: FY1999: NPAC $75K, WebWisdom.com $75K, NCSA $50K, Boston University $50K FY2000,2001,2002: Syracuse University: $1.4M Cornell: $0.3M NCSA: $250K BU: $150K Rice: $100K Trace: $150K Other NCSA/NPACI Partners: $450K Possible Additional Partners Dept of Energy Laboratories (as major employers of physicists and engineers) Large Experimental Physics Groups (as sources of custom education and outreach material) SUNY Albany CTG (Center for Technology in Government -- Outreach to State and federal government) Missisippi State University Engineering Research Center (CFD Course material and curricula development -- Outreach to DoD Researchers) Jackson State University Computer Science (HBCU Program Coordination -- integration of curricula into undergraduate education) CILT Center(SRI Stanford) (Representing Academic Education Community with excellent education technology industry contacts) Industry: Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems etc. (This will be implemented as an Industry partners program. One could involve industry such as Boeing and the Carrier Corporation who hire engineers and scientists. Concept This proposal will develop and deploy new physics and engineering curricula from the K-12 through graduate level. Interactive material developed for the curricula will also serve to support outreach programs which will enable the general public to understand better science and engineering. Further the modular currcula will support certificate programs that allow retraining of those with existing degrees. Distance education will allow broad dissemination of the new curricula to both students and teachers. The proposal is built on the following hypotheses and observations 1) One can identify a new interdisciplinary field "Internetics" lying on the interface of computer science and application areas which is enabled by the deployment of high speed communication infrastructure and is based on the emerging "object web" technologies which combine the best of conventional Web, COM, CORBA and Java ideas. This is an "information science" but impacts physics and engineering as these fields underly the infrastructure and the base information technologies allow new ways of communicating scientific and engineering concepts to both the public and students. 2)Internetics can be used to build new interactive and collaborative learning models which can revolutionize all areas of education and training. In particularit enables distance learning which will democratize learning opportunity and allow all students to participate independent of their location. Further modern technology allows one to deliver "Object Web" based curricula customized to the students needs and abilities. In particular physical disabilities like location need not be an impediment to learning. 3) Although there is declining student interest in conventional technical fields such as physics, this is clearly not in the national interest as technology will drive the economy for the forseeable future. The fundamental knowledge, technical(mathematical) skills, and problem solving skills characteristic of good programs in physics and engineering are a wonderful education which should be preserved. We hypothesize that this can be done with a new curricula which downplays some traditional detailed phenomenology but combines a basic physics/engineering education with Internetics technology courses which can be viewed as a minor in applied computer science or computational science. 4) There is shortage of trained Information Technology workers and an education in Internetics clearly prepares potential employees not only with good computer science skills but also gives them an application focus which is important. 5) There is tremendous need for better science and engineering understanding both in schools and in the general public. The "Object Web" with interactive simulations integrated into a rich web resource allows far better ways of explaining science supporting constructivist models of learning. The above motivates the following proposed activities 1) Continue development and deployment of new technologies to support a) Interactive simulations b) Distance learning and c) Universal Access with d)Novel technology based assesment capabilities 2) Develop new curricula integrating internetics with computer science, physics and engineering. Insist that all students participatng in the project participate in these interdisciplinary programs. Develop curricula in a modular fashion that supports re-use in multiple arenas. 3) Ensure that curricula modules (and the core "distributed educational objects") can are used in science education for non science majors at Universities and both in K-12 education andgeneral science outreach to the public. Work with education professionals to develop programs so that new and existing high school science teachers can take advantage of these developments. Qualifications of the Partners 1) Syracuse has pioneered many of the key ideas a) TangoInteractive and WebWisdom distance education and curricula support technology b) Initial Internetics courses and packaging of certificates. c) Novel web based interfaces for disabled individuals d) "Science for the 21st Century" course demonstrating modular web-based learning for non science majors e) Interactive simulation modules from both physics and engineering 2) Syracuse has relevant professional schools The Information Studies(IST), Newhouse School of Communication and the School of Education (which led with NPAC the succesful Living SchoolBook project) provide excellent support 3)Cornell is already collaborating with Syracuse in developing interactive web-based educational modules while their Theory Center has pioneered good web curricula practice in their "Virtual Workshop" series of courses. 4) NCSA and NPACI has established a joint EOT (Education, Outreach and Training) activity which has linked different communities around the country with an impressive collection of partners. They will be essential in ensuring the national quality, dissemination and contribution to our proposal.