We prpose to build portal technology around E-speak. This will be
aimed at distance education and feature support for industry standard
educational objects with special attention to the the key service
of collaboration. We have substantial experience over the last three
years teaching at Jackson State University from Syracuse using
sysnchronous collaboration. We have designed a new system working
with the NCSA Alliance and described at:
http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/hp/draftapril8.html and
http://www.new-npac.org/users/fox/documents/pajavaapril00/
It is characteristized by integrated support of synchronous and
asynchronous collaboration with multiple sharing modes from shared
display to collaboration aware. A key technical idea is a powerful event
model which allows information to be shared between clients and stored reliably.
This will also enable portal functions such as user customization.
We will adopt a succesful three tier model with two well defined XML
interfaces: client-server (portalML) and server: back end resource (resourceML)
We will be building this system from scratch as we move from Syracuse to
Florida State University. E-Speak seems a very attractive technology on
which to base this effort and we had already decided to evaluate it and compare
with the Ninja system from Berkeley.
Fox is chief technologist for FSU's major distance education program
and he has good alliances with networks of HBCU's. These will
be used to test system as it is built.

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