The Third NSF MRA Train-the-Trainer Workshop
URL for Conference: http://renoir.csc.ncsu.edu/RTCPP/HTML/Workshop5/index.html
URL for Key Related Links: http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/petcandt/index.html

Trip Report by Geoffrey Fox
This meeting was the last in a set organized by a collaboration between NCSU ( North 
Carolina State: Mladen Vouk) and CRPC(Center for Research in Parallel Computation: 
Danny Powell). The MRA (Meta-Regional Associates) program from NSF funded 
through independent reviewed proposals the type of collaboration with Supercomputer 
Centers that is now expanded and embodied in the PACI partners. These two MRA's 
were both devoted to training with the goal of bringing to the Supercomputer Center 
users the expertise of the computational science research community. The original 
strategy was termed train-the-trainers to indicate a hierarchical model where experts 
trained NSF and other Supercomputer center staff who in turned trained the users. This 
workshop was focussed on a different approach where distance (distributed) education 
technology is used to bring the experts in a field to a broad range of users. This workshop 
was designed to set the scene for a set of training courses that will use a variety of 
delivery techniques. These courses have not yet been scheduled and include short courses 
this summer and longer deliveries during the fall. Courses currently expected are at all 
levels of education and training.
	* K-12: Java Programming from NPAC
	* Undergraduate: Introduction to Parallel Programming (Boston) and 
	 Introduction to Networking (NCSU)
	* Graduate: Introduction to Computational Science (NPAC)
	* Training: HPC++ (Indiana) and Performance Tools (Illinois)

The workshop started with a summary of issues -- expanding the discussion above. Then 
Tango from NPAC and WLS from NCSU were covered in general. WLS is based on the 
dominant Internet RealPlayer technologies and their integration with curricula. Tango 
supports a more general synchronous collaborative approach to distributed learning. This 
was followed by two major talks on asynchronous systems -- Susan Mehringer from 
Cornell on their virtual workshop and Barbara O'Keefe from UIUC who has an 
impressively varied and deep experience with a variety of tools. Finally there was a panel 
discussion including short presentations from Carver (George Mason on Introductory 
C++), Landau (OSU on undergraduate physics) and Severance (MSU on a system with 
related goals to WLS). Roscoe Giles presented the current PACI EOT (Education 
Outreach and Training) picture.
The second day consisted of approximately 90-120 minute WLS and Tango tutorials in a nice 
PC Laboratory with two sessions of each to accommodate the customers.
The workshop attracted an interesting active audience with a broad representation 
including government, DoD training, K-12 and community colleges as well as traditional 
universities. Currently significant follow up is started on the courses given above