"Students today are raised on technology, fundamentally changing the educational environment and how students interact, learn, and share," said Scott McNealy. "Continued focus on eliminating barriers to education by leveraging technology and the network will help bridge the digital divide and deliver world-class education to everyone. Today's students are the leaders of tomorrow, and it is our duty to provide the education they need to shape the future."


During his presentation, McNealy invited guests to share the stage to discuss new collaborations and technology developments. McNealy introduced the Sun Center of Excellence (COE) in Scholarly Information Architecture and H. David Lambert, vice president and chief information officer at Georgetown University, who discussed the goals of improving the use of technology to further education.


Global Education and Learning Community (GELC)


McNealy also welcomed to the stage Dr. Barbara (Bobbi) Kurshan, the newly appointed executive director of the non-profit Global Education and Learning Community (GELC), created to offer free, open standards based curriculum to increase the reach of educational tools. The GELC is aimed at improving global education by empowering teachers, students, and parents with self-paced, web-based, free and open content (curriculum resources, assessment) combined with best practices for advancing student achievement world wide.


Kurshan shared her vision for moving the GELC forward and her thoughts on utilizing open source technology to leverage educational development. As director she will lead an advisory board with representatives from nearly every continent to extend the vision for this group. The GELC Executive Director directs all activities of the GELC, including managing the various working groups, monitoring technical developments, overseeing the education community process, managing the creation of GELC specifications, and representing the GELC to external organizations.


McNealy showcased next-generation technology with the introduction of Sun Small Programmable Object Technology (SPOT) and expansion of the Sun Grid Grants for Education program. Project Sun SPOT offers a new, battery-operated platform for development of next generation wireless sensor networks, robotics, and personal consumer electronics that educators are already using in Java classes on embedded programming as well as in design classes for new consumer electronics.


Already in use at Princeton University, the Sun Grid Grant program was developed to award ten universities 100,000 hours each on Sun's grid-based computing infrastructure, designed to enable accelerated innovation without the University having to invest in expensive IT infrastructure.

Joining Princeton in utilizing the Sun Grid are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Binghamton University, the State University of New York, Clemson University, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the Southeastern Universities Research Association, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Solaris 10 University Challenge

Sun is also fuelling IT skills development with further education initiatives that give students and workers greater access to technology. With the Solaris 10 University Challenge, announced during EduCause 2005, Sun has extended an opportunity for student developers and others at universities to develop projects based on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris(TM), Sun's open source project for Solaris. The winner will receive cash and Sun technology, and their university will receive a retail value credit up to $100,000 toward the purchase of Sun technology. Submissions are due by June 10, 2006.


Sun's strong engagement for educational development has yielded fruit, as a series of international customer wins has demonstrated. Markets as varied as Argentina, England, India, Italy, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, and Taiwan have chosen Sun products for use in classrooms, government operations, and institutes of higher learning to give students and workers technology skills to compete in today's global economy.


Integrated Bradford, England - an Amey-led consortium


Furthermore, Sun is a member of the successful Integrated Bradford consortium, which won the contract after a six-month selection process involving a team of school representatives and council officers. The program will see the deployment of 4,500 ICT access devices, enabling all secondary school pupils and teachers in Bradford to be given access to their own Sun Ray desktop or laptop, creating a virtual learning environment where it is as natural to search for information using the Internet as it is to open a textbook. The infrastructure will be supported by Sun's Java Enterprise System (JES), which offers a flexible, affordable and future-proofed network. JES is capable of supporting any application or operating environment, allowing schools to add extra capabilities when they are required.


Italian Ministry of Education


Sun and the Italian Ministry of Education University and Research (MIUR), in collaboration with the Java Italian Association (JIA), have an agreement to extend the knowledge of Java technology within Italian schools by providing online access to Java training courses for students and IT teachers.


The project, called "Java a Scuola" (Java at School), is part of a framework of initiatives sponsored by MIUR to enhance the quality of teaching by applying multimedia technology. As the use and penetration of Java continues to grow, the Italian education authorities want to enable future generations to be equipped with the Java skills that businesses demand. The initiative builds on Sun's track record and commitment to effectively promote the use of technology in education.


Spanish Ministry of Education and Science


ISun has entered into an agreement with the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to give the use of technology in education a significant boost by donating the Java Desktop System to all interested schools and universities across the country. Approximately nine million students will benefit from this program, which also aims to give teachers and administrative staff access to one of the most robust desktop software systems in the world.


At a regional level, Sun has entered into an agreement with the government of Valencia that provides free distribution of the Java Desktop System and StarOffice to all schools in the region. Licenses to use the Java Platform, Standard Edition, J2EE, J2ME and Java WebStart were donated to approximately 1,500 schools in the region, benefiting 525,000 students and 50,000 teachers. At the higher education level, Sun has also donated a classroom equipped with Sun open source software and Java W2100z workstations to the Polytechnic University of Cataluna for use in practical training of the Faculty of Computing in Barcelona.