V.  WHY ARE THESE IN-SYNC CONCEPTS IMPORTANT FOR OUR COLLABORATORS?

 

REASON 1:    These IN-SYNC concepts are consonant with the creativity/innovation themes sounded during the recent 2006 World Economic Forum, and I very much welcome an opportunity to work with each of you in some capacity to actualize our IN-SYNC objectives, especially with reference to our intent to experiment with new ways of nurturing creativity in science, technology, and the arts in order to co-create a "Culture of Innovation" by catalyzing a paradigm shift in our culture of creativity, innovation, and risk-taking and by inculcating a new "National Refrain" of risk-enabled, "Innovative Entrepreneurship" within all the demographic components of our US populace and elsewhere. 

 

Moreover, all of us need to hear each others' ideas about our respective roles in the development of our Human Capital [especially our children], especially since there seems to be a somewhat urgent need for "un-common sense" also in K-20 education (http://www.nsf.gov/news/speeches/bement/06/alb060125_ncsa.jsp).  All of us need to help one another in our respective quests to explore some of the crucial issues apposite to the development of our Nation's Human Capital, especially with reference to whether there are any special loci (a) within our own respective institutions that might (or currently) serve as "expeditionary outposts" (cf. Doug Engelbart's "advanced pilot outposts" at http://www.bootstrap.org/) for whatever each of our collaborators envisions while "Standing in the Future Today" and/or (b) within any of our partner organizations where we can collaborate to accomplish stated objectives, especially with reference to K-20 education.

 

 

REASON 2:    The nascent infrastructure for VMC is currently being co-created (but much too slowly to ensure/safeguard our Nation's well-being).  Our collaborators' focus is the synergistically expedited development of our Nation's Human Capital by leveraging and pooling all of our Nation's resources (viz., our existing Human Capital, physical, and fiscal resources) for the mutual benefit of all stakeholders.  During our organizational meeting in Puerto Rico in June 2005, our collaborators (university professors, deans, provosts, etc. -- including several internationally-renowned Presidential Mentors) agreed to focus initially on the actualization of VMC for undergraduate university students (K-20 peer mentoring communities will be established as soon as a well-qualified mentor pool has been organized).  During the brainstorming session that was conducted on 6/14/05 to explore "Using Technology to Best Advantage" (as part of the NIGMS-sponsored MORE Program Directors’ Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico), the participants assessed some of the known pros and cons that need to be considered for Virtual Mentoring (see summary report posted at http://www.geocities.com/rm63f/VMCBrainstorming.doc).

 

 

REASON 3:    Ubiquitous Broadband e-Access is an essential prerequisite for nationwide roll-out of (and access to) (i) NCSA's NSF-funded Access Grid (http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/), (ii) EPIC's Virtual Institutes (http://www.eotepic.org/) for K-20 education and beyond, especially with reference to math and science education (including tutoring and mentoring) via NCSA's Access Grid-in-a-Box (AGiB) technology [http://foxtrot.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8900/public/AGIB/ ; http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/index.html], and (iii) VMC.  In the meantime, anyone interested/involved in education can join one or more of several EPIC Virtual Institutes that already exist and participate right now (with or without their students) in any one (or more) of our Moodle discussions (e.g., our EPIC Access Grid in Education Moodle at http://www.eotepic.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=2 and/or our Virtual Mentoring Moodle at http://www.eot.org/moodle/) .

 

 

REASON 4:    One of our collaborators at NCSA (www.ncsa.edu), Edee Wiziecki (http://www.eotepic.org/page.php?file=display_person.php&id=55), recently used NCSA's NSF-funded Access Grid (http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/fl/accessgrid/) to establish a Virtual Institute for Education (includes K-12 teachers and students nationwide) [see http://www.eotepic.org/print.php?sid=536 ; http://www.eotepic.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=536 ; http://www.eotepic.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=2 ; http://www.eotepic.org/moodle/course/category.php?id=8)].   Other relevant Virtual Institutes can also be found at http://www.eotepic.org/ .

 

 

REASON 5:    Another one of our collaborators, Dr. Tony DePass [http://www.aspb.org/committees/minorityaffairs/members.cfm; Long Island University’s Associate Dean of Research and Co-Director of the NSF-funded Multimedia and Interactive Learning Project] participated in the CRA/ISLS/NSF Cyberlearning Workshop on March 24-25, 2005 to provide broad community input to NSF EHR as it developed new funding programs in support of Cyberlearning, as a component of the then emerging Cyberinfrastructure initiative.

This fourth workshop focused on "the interplay between communities of learning or practice and cyberinfrastructure: how the emergence and continuing development of each is informing the other. Even as new modes of interaction are made possible by advanced information and communication technologies, new demands and constraints arise. These include temporal, social, cognitive, and perhaps even physical ones. Changes in social networking dynamics, in organizational structure and behavior, and in the nature and role of identity are three among many interesting areas to explore."

I had been invited to participate in this workshop by NSF's Lee Zia (http://www.nsf.gov/staff/staff_bio.jsp?lan=lzia&org=NSF) and Andy Bernat (Executive Director of Computing Research Association; http://www.cra.org/main/cra.people.staff), but Tony went in my stead because I was unable to attend because of prior family commitments.

 

 

REASON 6:    On 6/24/97, during the US President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) meeting (http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/meetings/1997/19970624/martinez-24Jun97/), I had originally proposed that we must enable Ubiquitous Broadband e-Access to all 100 million US households in order to (a) co-create the tools and resources essential to Boost America's Collective IQ (http://www.bootstrap.org/) for the 21st Century and Beyond by "Shooting for the Moon" TODAY for all of America's children and our children's children ("America's Workforce of Tomorrow") and (b) thereby safeguard our National Security by advancing the competitiveness of each and every American.  Five years later, in 2002, consonant with AmericansIN-SYNC, this proposal was adopted and promulgated by TechNet via its compelling National Broadband Policy [http://www.technet.org/issues/broadband/ ; http://www.technet.org/news/release/?postId=6265&pageTitle=TechNet+CEOs+Call+for+National+Broadband+Policy].  TechNet is a bipartisan consortium of America's top IT/IS CEOs, including one PITAC member and 3 members of TechNet's Executive Council with whom I've shared our IN-SYNC concepts.

 

 

REASON 7:    As I indicated to PITAC on 6/24/97, the benefits and ROI (Return on Investment) of actualizing Ubiquitous Broadband e-Access via something akin to AmericansIN-SYNC would be enormous for ALL Americans (while the cost-to-benefit ratio is miniscule) – akin to the ROI from our Moon Shot’s benefits.  Moreover, a white paper posted on TechNet’s website ["Building a Nationwide Broadband Network:  Speeding Job Growth" -- http://www.newmillenniumresearch.org/event-02-25-2002/jobspaper.pdf ] indicates that Ubiquitous Broadband e-Access will provide a very substantial ROI.  See also Dr. Rob Atkinson's white paper [“Unleashing the Potential of the High-Speed Internet” -- http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=140&subsecid=292&contentid=250894 ]. 

 

 

REASON 8:    During his FOSE 2006 keynote presentation on 3/8/06 (http://www.cisco.com/offer/fose/keynote.htm?sid=TEST), Cisco's CEO/President John Chambers expressed Cisco's intent to actualize TelePresence and virtualization within all organizations nationwide via the Intelligent Information Network (IIN; http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns650/networking_solutions_market_segment_solution.html). 

 

 

What do you think?