Michael N. Kalochristianakis

The Greek School Network: A Paradigm of Successful Educational Services Based on the Dynamics of Open-Source Technology

The Greek school network (GSN) is a closed nationwide educational network that offers advanced telematic and networking services to all primary/secondary education schools and administration offices in Greece. The primary objective of GSN is the provisioning of a network infrastructure for the interconnection of school PC laboratories so that modern educational methods and pedagogical models can be applied to the school community. GSN has scaled in size, has reached maturity, and is currently delivering a wide range of network and telematic services to its users. The emerging power of open-source software provides a sound technological basis for building cutting-edge services, capable of meeting internal administrative and monitoring needs, and modern pedagogical requirements for tools and services. The current paper presents an overview of GSN and an evaluation of its services based on the opinions of its users, and on service utilization and traffic measurement statistics. The paper reaches the conclusion that open-source solutions provide a sound technological platform that can cover, to a great extent, the needs for advanced educational services of the school community.

OpenRSM: a lightweight integrated open source remote management solution

The management of the corporate information technology (IT) environment is rapidly increasing in complexity as server logic architecture becomes more distributed and the number of entities deployed increases, forcing enterprises to resort to thick, complex and expensive high-end integrated systems and network management solutions. Investing in such systems can be inefficient for small and medium corporations, since the vast majority of management tasks performed are routine tasks, while personnel specialization requirements and costs are high. At the same time, the open source community has not yet produced a reliable and complete system and network management solution. Even though there are open source initiatives specializing in specific fields of remote management, such as network management, there has been no integrated open source solution yet. This paper introduces the Open Source Remote Systems Management (OpenRSM) platform. OpenRSM is an integrated remote management system created by integrating individual specialized open source management initiatives and significantly augmenting them to support additional functionality, so that a complete lightweight system and network management solution is produced. The system implemented facilitates daily management by providing an efficient, simple and adaptable environment for the majority of management operations.

Asynchronous Tele-education and Computer-Enhanced Learning Services in the Greek School Network

The Greek School Network (GSN) has developed and put into production a number of e-learning services, including synchronous and asynchronous tele-education, electronic class management, blogs, video-on-demand, podcasts and multimedia libraries. These new services complement established and accepted e-learning services, such as teleconferencing, user wikis, forums, email, electronic publishing, and e-magazines. This report presents the most prominent digital e-learning services offered by GSN, with emphasis on the asynchronous tele-education service, which is presented in detail. Its implementation platform, the Moodle course management system, is compared against well-known asynchronous open source tele-education platforms such as COSE, Claroline, Fle3, ILIAS, Manhattan, KEWL, Comentor, e-Class and Eledge. The evaluation of the asynchronous tele-education platforms is based on detailed comparisons of their characteristics and of the methodology they adopt in order to deliver educational services. The comparison is based on evaluation criteria derived from the documented experiences of research institutes and educational bodies and also from the experience of GSN itself. The paper concludes with the presentation of an extension to Moodle for implementing communities of practice (CoPs) that facilitate the creation and delivery of electronic educational open content for teachers in a synergetic manner.

The Concept and Design of an Open, Integrated Print Charging System

High end print management systems offer integrated credit reception and efficient, parametrized accounting for the use of resources. Thus, print management inherently conforms with the rationale and mentality of green and eco-friendly technologies which also relate with the ethos of the open source movement in IT. The current paper presents the design of an open system that integrates the provision of automated credit reception with accounting services in order to produce an open solution that fully automates the process of print charging. The objective of the system is to decide and design the necessary automations for credit reception so that it can be realized without any human intervention, to plan the integration with a suitable open print accounting system and to specify any complementary utilities and tools necessary for pilot and production installations.

An open and integrated management platform for wireless sensor networks

We present the conceptual basis and the initial planning for an open source management architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Although there is an abundance of open source tools serving the administrative needs of WSN deployments, there is a lack of tools or platforms for high level integrated WSN management. This is because of a variety of factors, including the lack of open source management tools, the immaturity of tools that offer manageability for WSNs, the limited high level management capabilities of sensor devices and architectures, and the lack of standardization. The current work is, to our knowledge, the first effort to conceptualize, formalize and design a remote, integrated management platform for the support of WSN research laboratories. The platform is based on the integration and extension of two innovative platforms: jWebDust, a WSN operation and management platform, and OpenRSM, an open source integrated remote systems and network management platform. The proposed system architecture can support several levels of integration (infrastructure management, functionality integration, firmware management), corresponding to different use-cases and application settings.

Deploying LiveWN Grids in the Greek School Network

A determinant factor for the introduction of grid technologies in production domains of scale can be the design of easy, fast and, from an operational point of view, realizable deployment procedures. Remote system management technologies, typically used to monitor and manage IT environments, are designed to offer remote software installation functionality that exhibits the aforementioned characteristics; however, previous work has shown that even valuable systems can fail to perform in heterogeneous, geographically distributed environments, especially if they are maintained by organizations affiliated to the public sector. The deployment of grid technologies throughout the Greek School Network can be achieved by combining OpenRSM, a novel open source solution capable to support usable, configurable, infrastructure management use cases in heterogeneous environments and LiveWN, a grid scavenging solution that integrates live technologies with gLite grids.

Color based subject identification for virtual museums, the case of fish

The identification of fish subjects in controlled underwater environments, such as museum, falls into the category of image processing and recognition problems. An interesting aspect of such problems is that they require real time processing and thus effective processing methods must be evolved for the implementation. Although there have been a lot of approaches that solve the identification problem using specialized methods such as contour identification, recognition of distinctive characteristics, besides others, our team at the Multimedia Content lab of TEI Crete has focused on analyzing the color of still images taken from pools in order to rapidly identify subjects.

Considerations for successful enterprise information systems deployment—The case of the Greek School Network

Managing the IT environment of large organizations such as the Greek School Network is challenging not only due to the complexity, diversity and age of the information processing infrastructure but also due to geographic dispersion and the IT support model. Recently, the Network attempted to follow known practices for IT enterprise management; in order to organize and automate both supervision and intervention it employed centralized system management architectures. This paper records the challenges encountered in order to configure a deployable, high-end enterprise platform for the management of school labs across the Greek School Network. The paper reaches the conclusion that such systems or services are not always straightforward to deploy or scale and discusses alternative directions that can bring general purpose infrastructure management for organisations that cannot benefit from enterprise systems yet are still in need of analogous functionality.

The Design of an Open and Integrated Sensor Network Management Platform

We present the conceptual basis and the initial planning for an open source management architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Although there is an abundance of open source tools serving the administrative needs of WSN deployments, there is a lack of tools or platforms for high level integrated WSN management. The current work is, to our knowledge, the first effort to conceptualize and design a remote, integrated management platform for the support of WSN research laboratories. The platform is based on the integration and extension of two innovative platforms: jWebDust, a WSN operation and management platform, and OpenRSM, an open source integrated remote systems and network management platform. The proposed system architecture can support several levels of integration in order to cover to multiple, qualitatively differentiated use-cases.