COLAB: A Collaborative platform for simulations in virtual laboratories

Resumen The use of new technologies has an important influence in educational environments obtaining new ways of producing learning. In order to obtain an educational system which fits with the educational necessities, it is necessary to join pedagogical and technical efforts. More concretely our developments are focused on CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) systems, in which the base of the knowledge building is the user collaboration. In this paper we are going to explain how we have designed and implemented an architecture with the main aim of supporting users collaboration using simulation tools. What is more this architecture has been designed in order to support asynchronous communication as well as the synchronous communication. Therefore this system has to incorporate ways to store persistent data and also introduce a synchronous system which enables the online communication between tools and users. In order to allow persistent data in the system, technologies like J2EE have been used in the design and implementation of this architecture. Dealing with the synchronous system it has been designed using notification technologies, especially using Elvin notification server as the core of the communication bus. In this paper it will be also described how the tools can interchange information subscribing and unsubscribing to special events delivered in the communication channel. Finally an example of collaboration inside this system will be showed, and it will be explained how the user can move in this environment as well as how users can coordinate the use of some resources.