Volume 11, Number 3 • Fall 2003 • Small Business/SBIR

WebTurbine Impacts Learning

MIn today’s interconnected world, collaboration and communication has become an integral part of one’s daily life, be it in work or play. Students can no longer spend their days in isolated classroom “islands” and be well prepared to go home or on to future professions in which networked interactions are the norm.

There is an important difference between broadcast communications like radio and television, and networked communications like the Internet. The key difference is who is enabled to produce things of value that others consume. On the Internet, everyone can be a producer of value.

Networked interaction in the classroom or laboratory environment enables students to explore, ask questions and find answers. Enabling the student to be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, free from the constraints of geographical location, is a strategy that helps us prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers. This use of networks for distance learning in its various forms is sometimes called telepresence.

The Internet today, however, is mostly a medium for essentially one-way communication from large, central publishers to relatively passive information consumers. We tend to mimic the broadcast communication model when we “surf” the Web to consume content. What is lacking is the means for convenient and effective information publication from the “edge” of the Internet where, for example, individual students, teachers and researchers are the producers and consumers. If the Web were to provide easy-to-use, bidirectional content sharing, then schools and students, typically limited in resources, would gain access to the Web as a productive medium to contribute content, not just passively browse.

NASA Dryden Flight Research Center’s pioneering work with Ring Buffered Network Bus (RBNB) technology, and now RBNB/WebTurbine, bridges this gap. Starting with the needs of real-time engineering test data distribution, a high-performance system has been built for enabling distributed collaboration, where engineers and scientists can share live, timely data. Adapted to the standards of Web-style communication, the resulting WebTurbine technology is accessible via simple and standard drag-and-drop files and Web browsers. Students and researchers can share a distributed information space of live, interactive data using familiar desktop interfaces and Web-enabled devices.

Thus, educators and students can become Web publishers of information that includes live, always-changing content using the limited resources available to them. Sharing this content amongst themselves, remote peers at other schools and/or becoming directly involved with NASA and its partners becomes part of the daily curriculum. The student becomes a contributor and partner, and, in doing so, gains the perspective and motivation to become an active participant in the quest for knowledge.

The RBNB core technology was developed by Creare, Inc. under a Phase II SBIR contract with NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. Efforts to enable telepresence and distance-learning applications also were funded by Dryden, but under a subsequent Phase III contract. *

For more information, contact Larry Freudinger at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, 661/276-3542, Lawrence.C.Freudinger@nasa.gov. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

NASA Official: Jonathan Root • Web Design: Printing & Design Office, NASA Headquarters • Credits