Abstract
The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) has been supporting a wide range of Collaboration Services and Tools which have been allowing researchers, groups and research communities to share ideas and collaborate across organisational boundaries.This talk will give an introduction to a number of exciting technologies which are now available. Focus will be on two main areas of Video Collaboration Tools, allowing researchers to talk face-to-face and share data in real-time, and Web Collaboration Tools, allowing researchers to share information and ideas with other like-minded researchers irrespective of distance or organisational structure. A number of examples will also be shown of how these technologies have been used with in various research communities.
A brief introduction will be given to a number of services which ARCS is now operating and/or supporting such as:
- EVO – A video conferencing application, which is particularly suited to desktop or low bandwidth applications.
- AccessGrid – An open source video conferencing and collaboration tool kit, which is great for room to room meetings.
- Sakai – An online collaboration and learning environment, support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.
- Plone – A ready-to-run content management system, that provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities, web sites, extranets and intranets.
- Wikis – A way to easily create, edit, and link pages together, to create collaborative websites.