TRECC is partnering with a number of national and state K-12 education organizations to help teachers and students reap the benefits of high-performance computing and graphics resources and collaborative technologies. These relationships with our partners enhance the education programs that TRECC is developing for high school students.

Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education
The National Science Foundation's Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) Program supports teaching fellowships for graduate students in the sciences, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) disciplines. The GK-12 Program is a collaboration of three campuses: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Alabama at Birmingham (GK-12 website), and University of Alabama at Huntsville. The fellows collaborate with SMET and Education faculty and participating K-12 teachers to integrate the use of computer-based modeling and scientific visualization in science and mathematics education.

Currently, we are looking for computer science classes in high schools to develop visualization programs remotely and use the TRECC graphics cluster. They will then be able to travel to TRECC to render their finished visualizations on the large Tiled Display Wall developed at the University of Illinois's National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

To get involved in the GK12/TRECC collaboration, contact .

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA)
On July 15, 2003, TRECC facilitated a workshop in which 80 student participants in the Illinois International Career Academy (ICA), a program sponsored by IMSA, collaborated remotely with high school students at Akifu High School in Hiroshima, Japan, to come up with ways to solve inflation problems in the Japanese economy.

The global student-to-student videoconference resulted in important lessons for the American and Japanese students, both in economics and culture.

"The ability to converse face to face in real time provides unparalleled depth to this learning experience. Without leaving the country, students in Illinois and Japan have the means to discuss similarities and differences in regard to schools, culture, and economics, which contributes to strengthening vital global relationships."

"Hosting this event at the TRECC facility gives the students an opportunity to learn about the visualization and communication technologies at the center. By videoconferencing on the 15' x 18' screens used for video projection they can see how next-generation collaboration tools can reduce the barriers of time and space."

For more information, contact .