Dear Colleague,

How can we best engage the current — and next — generation of students? Look to Hollywood!

That was the idea behind a conference organized by Sun's Global Education and Research team. The Digital Hollywood's "University Project" and Building Blocks Industry Conference, held in August, brought together leaders from the academic and entertainment industries — as well as Sun executives — to discuss ways that entertainment technology can enhance teaching and learning.

Conference participants included innovators from the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Google, DreamWorks SKG, UCLA Extension Department of Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts, Campus MovieFest, META-4, UC Santa Cruz, Muse Inc., and Stanford University.

• Sun Fire x64 servers for rendering and simulation applications
• Sun Fire X4500 "Thumper" systems for digital libraries
• Open Media Commons for DRM, Java and Looking Glass 3-D interface technologies

All are key to attracting the next wave of student developers to Solaris, Java, Jini and JXTA development environments.

Innovative Uses of Entertainment that Enhance Education
Digital Hollywood's "University Project" is an international consortium of university faculty, administrators, and students focused on the future of digital entertainment. The consortium shares ideas about ways to use entertainment technology to enhance teaching and learning and to collaborate with industry in order to transform those experiences into real-world applications. These applications will use next-generation broadband networks to support learning environments that foster research and collaboration. The industry is also looking at ways to use the converging mediums of film, animation, simulation, online gaming, Web 2.0 social networks, and virtual worlds in the educational process.

These new media-rich social networks will require massive amounts of compute power and storage capacity, creating demand for Sun solutions in all core areas of Sun's portfolio — systems, storage, software and services worldwide. Sun already has momentum in this industry, as seen in recent Sun technology implementations such as Enciclomedia Mexico and the U.S. Library of Congress National Audio/Video Conservation Center. Digital Media Centers are under way today on campuses like the University of British Columbia and National University of Singapore.

'Born Digital' Generation Raises New Questions
Addressing the needs of a new generation of learners that is 'born digital' raises many questions. What are the best practices for migrating new and existing content? What technology options are available to deliver content and to foster collaboration? The ultimate goal of Digital Hollywood's "University Project" is to address these and other emerging issues.

• Education Commons, Sun's virtual community of academic systems users, designers and systems implementers sharing knowledge, experiences and best practices
• The Open Media Commons initiative, an open-source community project developing a royalty-free digital rights management standard

Future Digital Hollywood events will advance the idea that educational technologies that spark imagination, discovery and self-paced learning can benefit both the academic and entertainment industries.

We are entering the Participation Age. Students are collaborating to create and supply content as much as they are consuming it. Mobile phones play music and take pictures; high-quality video is delivered to almost any device on earth; legitimate global P2P networks are being created that will transform the way we live and learn. Sun, through its products, support of open standards, and participation and sponsorship of community forums and conferences, invites you to join us in creating the Participation Age and engaging the next generation of students.

Sincerely yours,

Kim Jones
VP, Global Education, Government, and Health Sciences

Questions or comments? Please email education_news@sun.com