E-Learning Platform for Educational Resources Repurposing in Earth Observation

Recent development of eLearning Platforms, presentation technologies and user interaction methods has enabled the development of new, more complex and more efficient teaching materials for Earth Observation domain. However, the process of creating new learning resources is not a trivial task and most of the time technical knowledge is required for such an action. Furthermore, the data that is usually involved in Earth Observation related computations is represented by satellite images, terrain measured values or complex environmental modellings, all of these representing large amounts of data or requiring complex processing procedures. As a consequence, the computational power needed for dealing with such resources requires distributed architectures (like Grid or Cloud computing) that cannot be easily used by specialists without advanced technical knowledge (like meteorologists, geography specialists, hydrologists, etc.). Addressing these problems, eGLE eLearning Platform described in this paper provides to the teachers from different Earth Observation related disciplines a number of specialized tools that allow operations like description, execution and monitoring of Grid computations to be performed through a simple, yet powerful interface. Furthermore, eGLE application facilitates the re-usability of previously developed teaching resources, shortening the time required to create new materials and lowering their price.