Habanero [Habanero, 1996] is designed to facilitate multi-user collaborative use of software tools in the sciences and education. It enables user communities to make the most of their software development resources by reusing existing communication infrastructure and tools set. We have built a framework that will help developers easily create shared applications, either by altering an existing single-user application or by developing a new one from scratch. The framework provides functionality inherent to collaborative applications such as networking, security issues, and session management. Developers do not need to work outside their expertise domains or reinvent collaborative features for their own applications. The Habanero framework is implemented in the Java(TM) programming language [Sun Microsystems,1994]. Implementation in Java allows a single source code base to be used on all hardware platforms. Java also offers us the object oriented environment. Consequently, functionality offered for one tool can be incorporated into other tool, making significant code reuse possible even in multi-platform networking applications. Because the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is supported on multiple platforms, Habanero can provide highly general cross-platform object sharing by wrapping arbitrary application objects in a Habanero object for transport to multiple clients running on different platforms.
The goal of Habanero is to provide a cross-platform, generic and extensible synchronous collaborative framework to cover wide range of collaborative functionality's for different user communities. We thought that it was important to offer a generic framework, and a big variety of collaborative tools, to enable different user and developer communities to explore the new environment of remote collaboration in their day-life work activities. In education we are investigating the concept of the Virtual classroom/University to facilitate learning and instruction through Habanero. Integrating educators in the Habanero design and review processes, we have been given to have a better understanding of the virtual education needs as well as a test bed to experiment our software. The first results of this interactive process can be divided into several categories that can be organized according to the Habanero life cycle 's phases. In order to facilitate this process we are working with the Virtual Reality in Education Program [VR Program] for Educators group to discover what is needed to address their needs.
In summary, Habanero is providing the VR teachers a suite of tools to investigate real time remote education. Involving the educators in our project allow us to explore and adapt Habanero to the virtual education needs in order to improve and promote Habanero as a virtual education technology. Some of the educators have already adopted it, and will conduct collaborative lessons on different topics among several school classes during the fall 1997 semester.