1. See http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/petcandt/index.html for relevant web links which are not repeated below.
  2. A quiet revolution is recent opening of internal interfaces to all Microsoft technologies including Excel Word and PowerPoint. This is needed for COM to work properly -- all of these systems must be built out of documented components. This allows you to build shared (say with Tango) Word editors; Java viewers for any Microsoft application, a database version of PowerPoint which assembles PowerPoint presentations dynamically from individual foils.
  3. We can classify "Synchronous Collaboration" activities into the following broad areas
    4.
  4. We can classify "Asynchronous Collaboration" activities in the following ways. Note that as asynchronous training is based on students browsing web pages and so sophisticated web environments are included here.
  5. We note that we view "shared browser" capability of a synchronous collaboratory as allows one to conduct "guided tours" synchronously of the same back-end resource needed for asynchronous work. Thus we have three basic categories of technologies/material
  6. Where is Tango? So Tango has demonstrated all the needed capabilities to support all styles of synchronous collaboration. Currently major effort is to increase robustness so that can support all modes with "real users". The major difficulties are variable Internet quality of Service and erratic changing Netscape browser support. The Internet can be addressed effectively by using DREN but Netscape still has many bugs and uncertainties noted below, make it hard to have a very strategic plan.
  7. There is an important set of HPC core training content, which may not be gotten without a focussed effort. This includes
    8.
  8. Note vision includes Education at HBCU/MI Institutions as a goal and so support of education (as well as training is uncontroversial. The need for education for DoD users is less clear although there is some need which is naturally associated with Universities local to MSRC's (or user location). This needs support for virtual collaborative universities, as curricula material is likely to come from other sites (such as PET Universities).
  9. In ASC May 6 1998 meeting we identified 4 forms of training material which could be put on the web
  10. Note that care should be taken in producing any sophisticated material NOT to use HTML, as this is very difficult to integrate into databases or with systems like Tango. This is related to remarks in 7) above. Sophisticated applications require an understanding of the structure of the information. This can sometimes be guessed from an HTML version but only with an error prone process. XML with carefully designed customized tags is an approach that is much easier to keep up to date and to integrate material with latest tools.