Activities in the period July 1 --> December 31, 1999 fall into 3 major aareas: 1) Internetics Curriculum 2) Evaluation (from a technology and user point of view) and Extension of TangoInteractive Collaboration System 3) Study and Prototyping of Portals for education and Computational Science 1) Internetics Curriculum The curriculum ideas have been summarized in a paper http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/internetics2/ and several talks referenced on http://www.npac.syr.edu/DC/. Several of these talks were at Alliance activities especially at a) Chautauqua Albuquerque New Mexico on 9 August 99 in a workshop aimed at Computational Science: http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/abqallianceaug99/index.html b) NCSA Alliance Advisory Committee Meeting in Washington September 21 99 http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/ncsaeacinterneticssep99/index.html c) NCSA Industrial Partners program in Champaign October 12-13 99 http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/ncsatrainingoct99/index.html Personally this area will be great focus of Geoffrey Fox as he moves to Florida State University to be part of the new School of "Computational Science and Information Technology" which term is essentially equivalent to Internetics 2) Evaluation of Collaboration Technology We have used collaboration technology and looked at its role both to support "classic" classes at a distance and for applications like interactive versions of the Biology workbench. In particular we need to understand why systems like Tango and Habanero got modest user interest in spite of large effort in outreach and technology development, and interesting capabilities. We attribute the lack of uptake to a combination of immature base technology (Browsers and Internet connectivity) and inflexible designs focussing on one particular model for shared objects. We have described these lessons in an internal report available on request. They are incorporated in the concept of Collaborative Portals on the Web described in the following section. Many talks in this area have been accompanied by tutorials. Relevant cases are: SURA Meeting Birmingham Sept. 8 99: http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/suratangoxmlsep99/index.html http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/suratrainingtechsep99/index.html Rice University October 18 99: http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/ricetangooct99/ 3) Study and Prototyping of Portals for Education and Computational Science We have given several talks on this topic including several Alliance events. An important opportunity was the "XML Developers Conference" at Montreal August 19-20 99 http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/montrealxmlaug99/index.html where we highlighted work with Al Gilman, Alliance partner, on universal access. A meeting at Florida State October 8 99, focussed on the important topic of mathematics (and the role of XML again) http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/fsueducxmloct99/ The key meeting was the Alliance Portal meeting at Champaign October 22-23 99 http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/npacfullportaloct99/ http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/offbeatxmloct99/ Here we described new ideas on the systematic use of XML that can allow specification of portal content and layout. Features of the objects that comprise a portal include their sharing in either asynchronous or synchronous mode. We participated in the preparation of an NSF ITR proposal led by Alliance partner Boston This used many of the ideas developed in this task.