Vol. 1 Director's Corner

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Welcome to the new and improved MAGPI website. We hope that this will serve as a better communications tool to the region's educational and research communities, combining elements of opportunity from Kindergarten to high-end scientific research. Please take the time to review the various categories and better familiarize yourself with MAGPI's mission.

For this first issue of the "Director's Corner" I'd like to focus on our international involvement and the potential benefits that will bring to our members. We are working hard to establish good working relationships with schools in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and our own neighbors in Mexico and Canada. So far, the effort has been very rewarding, resulting in successful collaborations with France, Northern Ireland, and Israel, and good discussions moving forward in Mexico and Canada. For example, working jointly with the Chester County Intermediate Unit in Exton, PA, we put together a panel of experts from the University of Tel Aviv in Israel, Queen's University in Belfast, Dr. Scott Poland from Houston, Texas, and Dr. Kip Knight from West Chester University in Southeastern PA. For better than two hours, audiences consisting of educators, administrators, and school psychologists in Exton and Houston listened to discussions centered on crisis situations and the effect they have on students and faculty. The two audiences were given time to interact with the panelists following each discussion question, and by using H.323 videoconferencing in a continuous presence format, all audio and video was near broadcast quality. Many viewed this event as a once in a lifetime opportunity, allowing them to interact with world-class educators and psychologists, in real time, in their own hometown. I think this is just the beginning.

That event was prompted by the horrific events on September 11th and the inspiration of Dr. John Branson at the Chester County IU. The objective was to gain insights on how to deal with crisis situations where faculty are attempting to deal with the confusion and stress of their students while struggling to control their own emotions at the same time. The results were very successful. Not only did the audience participants walk away a sense of purpose and direction, but the panelists discovered new opportunities for additional collaborations.

Other activities are developing that are equally exciting. Please check the section on our website, "Resources." There you will find a description of the DIM project, a collaboration of several Universities in France that currently share faculty to teach a course on Multimedia computing. They are eagerly looking for American participants and have asked MAGPI to assist them in finding collaborators. Anyone interested? Please contact myself, or our Applications Coordinator, Jennifer MacDougall. Additionally, foreign language instructions are an excellent use of high performance networking. The high speeds and low latency permit perfect synchronization of audio and video. Currently, this application and international business projects constitute the most sought after need for relationships outside the U.S. But, like John Branson, when you use your own creative abilities, there are no limits to the variety of applications you will discover.

Now that your thought processes have been stimulated, let me tell you what our plans are to increase the visibility of regional schools and research institutions to the rest of the world. Last Spring we presented the successful "French Project" between the Wharton, Lauder Institute and the University of Grenoble to the European University Information Systems organization in Berlin, Germany. The project was well received and the entire experience turned out to be an excellent forum for establishing relationships with European partners. This year MAGPI is sending two delegates to the conference in Lisbon, Portugal where we intend to concentrate on developing new collaborations based on the requests of our constituents here in the region. In November of 2001, MAGPI and the Chester County Intermediate Unit jointly submitted a proposal to speak at the North American Regional Conference of the International Council for Open and Distance Education conference in Calgary, Canada. We were very pleased that our proposal was not only accepted, but the program committee saw fit to allot us 90 minutes to describe the process associated with the virtual panel discussion mentioned above. The ICDE, based in Oslo, Norway, has two Americans on its Executive Committee, Molly Corbett Broad, (President of the University of North Carolina), and Gary Miller, (AVP for Distance Education and Executive Director of the World Campus, Penn State University). We look forward to working more closely with this organization in the future.

In February this year, I will have the pleasure of speaking to the membership of Net@edu, the networking sub-group of Educause, about "Pursuing International Relationships." The slides and commentary will be available on this website shortly after the meeting in Tempe, Arizona.

This type of relationship building is intended to open doors for the academic and research institutions served by MAGPI. We hope that you will share your academic visions with us and give us the opportunity to help turn them into reality. It's what we're here for.

All the Best,

Gregory D. Palmer
Director, MAGPI

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