ED-MEDIA 1999 Proceedings Book - Association for the ...

Global Educational Multimedia Server – GEM
Clive Best, Philip Shiels, Monica de Paola
JRC, Ispra, European Commission
http://gem.jrc.it
System Outline
Abstract: GEM is the acronym for Global Educational Multimedia Server. It is a project initiated by the
Multimedia Education Taskforce of the European Commission. The concept of GEM is to develop a European
scale clearing house of information, products and services in the domain of emerging multimedia technology
applied to education and training. The vision of a new educational model based on high speed networks,
multimedia content and distance learning is already being pursued by many teaching institutions and
companies. The difficulty facing suppliers and users of such systems is to find existing services, planned
services and general information. This need is likely to increase greatly in the future as the market begins to
expand. One of the needs will be to help teachers and potential students to discover each other and to put
providers and customers in touch.
GEM is conceived as a dynamic database accessible through the Web, whose information and data content are
submitted and updated by the suppliers, teachers and to some extent students. It aims to be a focal point in
Europe for locating information and services in this growing domain.
GEM allows any Internet user to search for courses, educational products and educational events either through
simple free text or classified by thematic keywords and media types. However GEM is more than an ordinary
Web site. Users and organisations, students and teachers, providers and customers can register on the system.
After registering, users can “advertise” products if they are providers or requests for services if they are users.
Similarly Jobs, conferences notices and courses can be announced.
Each item of information entered by a user can be modified on-line by that user. There will soon be discussion
groups and Fora provided with the system. It is possible to upload multimedia content (images, audio and
video) from the users PC to the database.
GEM will also be able to host full interactive courses in a general framework. A database design and Web
interface will be implemented that can allow for a general course framework. This framework allows students to
register for courses and teachers to monitor progress. At this stage the system is envisaged as a solution for
small organisations without the facilities to run their own distance learning courses, but will be able to use GEM
to host them. Future developments envisage a federation of servers coupled through GEM.
GEM today is a dynamic database interfaced to the Internet. Users can interface to GEM using a standard Web
browser. Users search the database, submit information and update their entries in the database. Results of user
interaction are Web pages generated on the fly, shown schematically here as a presentation layer. The system has an
object design layer , where all components of the system are defined in object classes. The database will be a
freeware RDBMS and this interfaces through an SQL API layer. The system can be customised by user access eg.
Language preferences. This is shown schematically here as User racking. The interface of the system to the http
server is through the Common Gateway Interface or CGI.
The figure shows a simple schematic overview of GEM and how it will be interfaced to the network.
Internet
HTTP server
CGI Layer
Presentation Layer
User Tracking
Object Layer
SQL Layer