Lab Grids
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Historically
the term grid has been used to describe a worldwide communication infrastructure
for clustered computers that allows seamless transparent access to data and
computing power on demand in order to solve large scale computational problems.
Such computing grids cost a fraction of what a supercomputer costs. They are
commonly known in engineering, science and commerce.
Grid is
also a new paradigm for the information technology. The well-known World Wide
Web will be succeeded by the upcoming World Wide Grid. Futurologists are
promising that it will be possible to get large IT-resources “from a plug in
the wall” without needing to know who provides the resources and where the
resources are coming from. Nowadays, such service-oriented grids find
applications in quite new areas not previously considered as the environments
for a grid. An example of one such area is education. [15]
In the
LOs (learning objects) concept, the learning content is split into reusable
elements. These elements are used to build complex learning resources. In the
world of service oriented grids the LOs are becoming fully functional services
with their own user interface. They are independently interoperable blocks,
which may be used as they are, or reused to build new and more complex blocks
using other grid services, e.g. orchestration. LOs themselves can be nested.