IBM Partners with UCLA, NC State on Web Development
In an effort to promote expertise in Web 2.0 application development among the next generation of IT professionals, IBM has teamed up with two universities--University of California, Los Angeles and North Carolina State University--to provide support for academic programs teaching programming using open technologies like Groovy and Java in conjunction with Eclipse and Ruby on Rails.
IBM also said it will be providing its previously announced Lotus
Mashups software free to the academic community later this year.
Project Zero Incubator at NC State
At North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC), IBM's Project Zero
is being used to teach business application development. Project Zero
is an incubator project at IBM that focuses on Agile processes in Web
2.0 application development using SOA principles. Project Zero offers a
development environment that includes a scripting runtime and APIs
focused on producing "Representational State Transfer (REST)-style services, integration mashups, and rich Web interfaces," according to IBM.
NC State graduate students will work in the development environment
this spring as a part of a computer science class in which they'll use Groovy
and Java to develop a business application, a "time-slot signup
system." IBM said the students will be among the first developers to
get their hands on Project Zero.
UCLA's 'Choose Your Own Adventure'
Meanwhile, over at
UCLA, IBM has helped to launch a new project for the university's CS130
computer science course. Dubbed "Choose your own (technology)
adventure," the project allows students to propose their own
applications to develop and essentially shape their own coursework.
"'Choose your own (technology) adventure' is giving UCLA students a
truly unique opportunity to learn software engineering skills from the
best and brightest at IBM such as working in a team environment while
learning collaboration, networking, rapid decision making," said Paul
Eggert, the professor at UCLA who teaches the CS130 class. "Throughout
the project, they are researching and evaluating technologies and
connecting with open source developers and industry experts. This
method is helping us attract more students to learning about these key
technology areas by making things like Java and Eclipse extremely
relevant to their areas of interest."
The program is now in its fourth quarter at UCLA. It has involved 50
students so far and 27 IBM mentors, who have provided collaborative
support for Ruby on Rails and Eclipse projects.
Academic Initiative To Expand
The UCLA and NC State partnerships are part of IBM's Academic Initiative, which provides access to software, courseware and curricula, support, and discounts on hardware for colleges and universities.
"By collaborating with universities on new methodologies, the
resources available through its Academic Initiative, IBM is poised to
help faculty and students get an edge on the needs of the marketplace,"
said Jim Corgel, general manager of IBM's ISV & Developer Relations
group, in a statement released today. "The efforts now taking place at
UCLA and NC State are just part of how IBM is helping universities
adapt to the quickly changing world of technology. We accomplish this
by exposing students to tomorrow's technologies today and sharing best
practices from IBM's global development teams."
IBM said it plans to expand its Academic Initiative this year,
aiming for "double-digit growth" in the number of students reached over
the previous year. The company said it will also increase the number of
events it hosts for universities and businesses focused on open
standards and middleware supporting IBM's System z and other large
systems.
Lotus Mashups Free for Academics
As part of the announcement Feb. 14, IBM said it will release its commercial mashup software free for academic users.
IBM Lotus Mashups, which is expected to be released later this year
(although no firm date has been set), provides a browser-based tool for
assembling mashups blending enterprise and Web-based data. Lotus
Mashups is designed to allow "non-technical users to easily create
enterprise mashups." It includes a set of pre-defined widgets, a
"catalog" for locating usable widgets and mashups, and a tool that
allows users to build widgets that access enterprise data.
The company first unveiled
Lotus Mashups at the Lotusphere conference in Florida in January, along
with other Web 2.0 and collaborative tools, including Lotus Connections
2.0, a social networking tool, and an update to Lotus Quickr, a Web-
and desktop-based collaboration environment.