Guest Editorial Grid Education and Grid-Based Technologies Applied to Education: Ongoing Activities

GRID computing is often referred to as the next revolution after the Internet and the World Wide Web and evolved from high-performance and distributed computing during the 1990s. Although grid technologies were primarily intended to support computationally intensive scientific research because of the ever-growing need for computing resources, these technologies are increasingly being adopted in other domains, such as business, industry, or education, which is the scope of this special issue: Grid-Based Technologies Applied to Education. Grid technologies enable the sharing, exchange, discovery, and aggregation of resources (processors, storage, scientific devices, information, knowledge, etc.) across geographically distributed sites. To achieve these functionalities, grid middleware usually provides the following components: • security—user authentication and authorization in the grid infrastructure and support for data integrity and privacy; • data management—discovery, transfer, and access of data in the grid; • resource and job management—resource allocation and submission, monitoring, and control of jobs; • information system—monitoring and discovery of hardware and software resources of the grid. Grid computing builds on knowledge of Web services technologies, distributed computing, network security, and network architecture and programming. The Open Grid Forum (OGF, http://www.ogf.org), a community of users, developers, and vendors, leads the global standardization effort for grid computing, following open standards for grid software interoperability. Within this Forum, an ongoing initiative (started in 2006) is attempting to consolidate a Grid Education and Training Community Group (ET-CG) with the goal of sharing and developing best practice in grid-related education and training (including recommended curricula and teaching material). Grid education and the use of grid technology in the teaching process is crucial to bridge the “grid digital gap.” In this context arises the project Grid Technology To Enable Regional Development (CYTED-Grid, http://www.cytedgrid.org), funded for the period 2006–2009 by CYTED, the Latin American Program of Science and Technology for Development. The goal of this project is to contribute to the technological development of the Latin American region by promoting grid research and development activities and educational actions to provide university instructors with access to grid infrastructures and with a scientific and engineering skill for teaching and working within the rapidly expanding grid computing field. The goal of this special issue is twofold. On the one hand, the rapid growth of grid technologies involves educational needs