Sakai not only for education but also for Research

News from the Sakai website

Open Grid Computing Environments (OGCE) 2.0 released using Sakai

2006-May-09

Paragraph #5 -- In conjunction with the NMI R9 release, Open Grid Computing Environments (OGCE), another NMI team, is announcing a major revision of its software that enables the creation of Grid portals or Web-based user interfaces that simplify the process of identifying and accessing Grid resources. In a single download and one-step build process, the OGCE Version 2.0 provides a complete toolkit for building science-portal gateways. Newly incorporated Sakai collaboration portlets provide access to their tools such as calendar scheduling, document sharing and chat functions. Also included are Grid portlet clients to the Globus Toolkit 4 services for credential acquisition, remote command execution, and remote file management. The release also features new portlets for Condor and the Storage Resource Broker and optional support for PURSe Grid account management. The OGCE portlet software and plugin modules are integrated with the GridSphere 2.1 portal container and include GridPort information and file management Web services, which may be deployed as separate "science gateway" services. Read the whole article at: http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/649667.html

Follow up on May 22

As mentioned on this weblog before, on May 22 there will be a followup meeting with those people and/or institutions in The Netherlands that are really interested in Sakai. Those that previously expressed their interest have received an email regarding this followup meeting with a detailed agenda. We plan on starting up a special interest group (SIG) for Sakai.

This is the agenda for our meeting on May 22:

1. Welkom en introductierondje

2. Discussiethema's:
- Wat is zinvolle samenwerking tussen instellingen?
- Welke mate en vorm van informatie-uitwisseling is nuttig?
- Welke werkvormen en taakverdeling hanteren we?

3. Europese samenwerking en lidmaatschap Sakai Foundation

4. Afspraken en vervolgstappen

5. Wat verder nog ter tafel komt (wvttk)

The meeting is open to everyone in The Netherlands that has a serious interest in Sakai. So if you haven't received the formal invitation, please make yourself known (preferably by commenting on this post, but email is also OK) and we will provide you with the full details.

Presentations online

The presentations of the Sakai meeting in Utrecht (19th april) are available.
They can be found on this webpage from the SURF website.

Sakai Status Update

Charles (Chuck) Severance, the Chief Architect of Sakai published an insightful post on his weblog. In this post he provides us, Sakai users and implementers, with the latest info on the issues that will be tackled during the development cycle for the next Sakai 2.2 release.
The link to his weblog is here

Integrating Sakai - howto's

As you might be aware of, Sakai intends to be a enterprise product. As such it needs to integrate with the existing ICT infrastructure that you might have in place at your institution. You will find a good starting point (in my opinion) on integration on the wiki of the community, that is very actively growing.
Mark Norton (Unicon) has created the page on this wiki called: "Integrating Sakai". He starts of his article with the the sentence: "Integrating Sakai into your university environment depends a lot on just how integrated you need it to be. The following kinds of integration can be considered: * Unintegrated * Database Integration * Enterprise Service Integration * Portal Integration". If you want to know more, just go to the wiki!

Willem van Valkenburg: Sakai or not Sakai. Is that the question?

If you want to read a sort of reassuring piece (in the Dutch language) on why you should and could stick to Blackboard, I would like to point to the weblog by Willem van Valkenburg of the TU Delft. E-learn Weblog van Willem van Valkenburg: Sakai or not Sakai. Is that the question?
Let me be clear in my reaction: all the points that Willem makes, are more or less valid, at least for now (but how about the future?). I will leave you in this post with my response to the final argument of Willem. The final argument that Willem uses in 'defense' of sticking with Blackboard is that a migration to Sakai will cost a lot and will not be favored by the end-users. I think, especially in higher ed, that a lot of end-users are quite change-receptive (what about all those netgen students that will be flocking our campuses soon!). To conclude: we are planning to do pilots with Sakai next Fall, just to see what exactly the impact will be of using Sakai instead of TeleTOP. We will keep you updated!
Oh, for some facts and figures regarding the use of (and migration to) Sakai, here are some references:
1. Presentation by Unicon, one of the commercial partners in the US, held at a recent Educause conference on key succes factors for implementing Sakai.
2. A comprehensive website from the Charles Sturt University (Australia) on their endeavours in Sakai.
3. A weblog by the University of British Columbia (Canada) that is intended for end-users that are considering moving from WebCT to Sakai (great way of assisting the users!).
4. A very detailed comparison chart on Sakai 2.0.1 (named Scholar) and Blackboard 6.2 from Virginia Tech (USA).
5. The page on the wiki of the worldwide Sakai community where all information is gathered regarding migration. So far Moodle, WebCT and Blackboard are covered.

Bloggers in your audience: great fun!

I did know that we had two webloggers in the audience at our Sakai meeting on April 19. But I found one more blogger, being Keith Russell of the University of Utrecht.
Anyway, Keith (in English), Wijnand (in Dutch) and Wilfred (also in Dutch, quite detailed, very nice) took some time to share their impressions of our meeting on Sakai.

Sakai voorlichtingsbijeenkomst: First impressions

Today was a great day: we had our first Sakai voorlichtingsbijeenkomst, organised on behalf of the SURF Foundation. There where some 40 people present, of several HE institutions and commercial companies in The Netherlands.
My impression of today is as follows: it was fruitful meeting, where we have gotten a good feel of what the Dutch HE sector is thinking and doing with regard to Sakai. It was great to hear that at least one commercial company is actively involved with Sakai right now, being Stoas. I guess that a lot of questions that came up this afternoon, are very good breeding ground for the services that Stoas is planning to offer for the community.
What struck me where the questions regarding the uniqueness of Sakai, compared to products like Moodle of MS Sharepoint. My opinion is that this should not be the discussion we should be having right now. Sakai is just as bad or good as the products where you would compare it with. What is much more important, is what Frank has presented: the fact that you can have a definite influence in the process of where the Sakai Foundation will be heading. The Foundation is not about us and them, there is only 'us'!
On a formal note: The presentations will be available shortly, please pe patient. There is a followup meeting planned for the May 22, where we will try to give the Sakai NL community some more shape and substance with the institutions that are really actively involved with Sakai right now.
Update: my presentation is available on http://www.utwente.nl/elo

Sakai 2.1.2 is now available!

On Thursday April 13th the Sakai Foundation launched their latest release of the Sakai suite version 2.1.2. This release offers several improvements and more efficient integration between several tools and elements.
The 2.1.2 release offers also a bundled release with the open source digital portfolio, OSP product.
More information is available on this website

Latest newsletter available

On sakaiproject.org you will find the latest Sakai Newsletter, dated April 6, 2006. There is a summary of the voting results, as mentioned on this weblog last week. Other interesting news is the job posting at the UC Davis for a senior programmer. Anyone interested?

Sakai Newsletter: March 23, 2006

Sakai Newsletter: March 23, 2006
Just a short index to the topics of the newsletter

1. Sakai Conference Registration
2. Seeing Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
3. Position Opening: Open Source Implementation Specialist
4. Joseph Hardin to Speak at the University of Detroit Mercy
5. Unicon will Present Sakai at TechEd Conference
6. Unicon Offers Sakai Tools Developer Training
7. Events

The newsletter is available at the this link

Polling Results for Sakai 2.2 are available

Do you want to know which improvements Sakai 2.2 will have? Well, this is community effort, so you can find all the details on wiki of the Sakai Community. Just go to Polling Results for Sakai 2.2 - Confluence. There you wil find the results of the community voting, as well as the voting of the institutional representatives (the votes from those who are Sakai Partner).
I am glad to see that "Sakai Import and Export using IMS Content Packaging" is quite high on the list. This is really good news!

UvA Sakai Pilot van start

Afgelopen 27 maart is de UvA gestart met een Sakai pilot. Het betreft de HvA webklassen die vanwege licentie technische redenen niet in Blackboard gehouden konden worden.
Bij het inrichten was het wennen voor de ondersteuning omdat daar een aantal verstokte Blackboard gebruikers bij zitten. Na wat uurtjes 'spelen' kwamen we tot de ontdekking dat Sakai veel te bieden heeft en op een aantal punten beter scoort dan Blackboard.
De pilot duurt vier weken. Ik hou jullie op de hoogte.

VIctor Maijer

Sakai 2.1.1 is available

Sakai 2.1.1 is available for download. Version 2.1.1 offers fixes to issues unearthed in 2.1.0 since its release in December 2005. The 2.1 code is marked most prominently by the inclusion of course sections and making several of the bundle tools 'section-aware,' but there are other new tools and many improvements to the code. 2.1 is also the first version of Sakai to include provisional tools from the broader community. "

Hou 19 april vrij!

SURF :: Bijeenkomsten :: SAKAI voorlichtingsbijeenkomst: "Graag nodigen wij instellingen uit om op 19 april a.s. in de middag met ons van gedachten te wisselen en te kijken hoe we tot een optimale bundeling van krachten kunnen komen." Dit is een gratis bijeenkomst, komt allen.
Huidige deelnemerslijst telt al 5 instellingen, and counting!

Testing

DSC02685
Originally uploaded by wytze.

This is just a test to see if the pictures from Flickr come through. But in the near future you will find more activity here!

Vancouver is next!

The forthcoming Sakai Conference will be held in Vancouver, BC, May 30-June 2nd, 2006.
Call for papers is open already.

Reflecting on Austin

This was my first Sakai conference. I had a great time, and met a lot of nice people. It seems to me that there is a lot of enthousiasm and positiveness in this community. Hopefully this will not wear anytime soon!
The biggest challenge for us, in Europe, will be to form a coherent group that constructively will influence the way Sakai is heading, as a community as well as the product itself. Sakai sure is, in the current version (2.1.0) quite an American tool in itself. Check the European issues that we identified during our Birds of a Feather session.

Sakai conference on its way

So, the conference is officially one day old now. I have a good feeling about it. Joseph Hardin kicked off this morning with again this message that we are the community. Furthermore he had a lot of slides on the Foundation etc.
I had my own presentation on the needs for our nextgen VLE. You can find this presentation on the confluence wiki. Please feel free to respond!

SAKAI 2.1.0 Release

SAKAI 2.1.0 Release
from the sakai website The new functionality of the 2.1.0 release is marked most prominently by the inclusion of course sections and making several of the bundle tools "section-aware," but there are other new tools and many improvements to the code. This is also the first release of Sakai to include provisional tools from the broader community. See the Documentation area below for more details.
On this page you'll find further information on what the release includes, along with system requirements, an installation guide, and links to other relevant community spaces for the Sakai project.