Anyone going to Berlin?

Something I also sent out to Euro Sakai mailing list recently. Please reply ASAP.
What started out at the bar in Amsterdam as just an idea, seems to become something real...
What am I talking about?
I am talking about a great marketing opportunity to make ourselves and Sakai known, by doing some promotion at the Online Educa conference in Berlin, on Berlin (Germany), November 28 - 30, 2007. See http://www.online-educa.com/.
At this largest elearning conference in Europe there is a possibility that we can use the booth of the SURFfoundation and JISC (they have a combined booth) at the trade floor. If so, then we need a few (between 5 and 8) people that will be answering questions, show some stuff etc at the booth.
So, my main questions are:
1/ Who is going to the Online Educa conference?
2/ Who is willing to spend some hours in the booth to do some 'marketing' stuff?

Ofcourse, if we are going to do this, we will need to do some preparation (posters etc), but that should not be an issue.

Please respond ASAP, as we need to finalize our arrangements with SURFfoundation and JISC soon.
Thanks in advance!

Visit to Rotterdam

Yesterday I paid a visit to Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). They invited me to give them a introduction to Sakai in 25 minutes. I talked to a group of about 20 people, that are considered to be the elearning experts of this university. The presentation (Google doc; Dutch) went quite well!
What striked me was that there was quite a bit of frustation within the group about Blackboard (their current VLE). It was called inflexible, hard to manage etc. There were also the questions about what opensource is about. For example the question how security and bugs are handled with these type of software communities. Well, as Chris already wrote yesterday: we are doing quite good.

Security releases of Sakai

Last friday two security releases of Sakai became available. Go to the release page for the latest info on this 2.4.1 release.
In the meantime the community is working hard for Sakai 2.5 to come out on November 12. Some news on this release:

• Open Source Portfolio will be promoted to the core of Sakai
• Abilities to delete unwanted stuff in Forum, Messages and Chat
• Some good stuff in Resources
• iCal subscription export service and import, available in Schedule (yeah!!)
  
• and much more....

I you have some spare time, please devote it to the QA of Sakai 2.5. Check out confluence for more information on how to help.

Help NIET mee aan de SURFgroepen campagne

[this is in Dutch] SURFnet is wel erg druk om SURFgroepen te promoten.... Nu wordt er zelfs een oproep geplaatst om mee te helpen om SURFgroepen bekend te maken (bron). Ik zou de collega's in het land willen oproepen om NIET mee te doen aan deze campagne!
Wil je weten waarom ik deze oproep plaats? Omdat ik vind dat SURFnet hiermee nogal inbreuk maakt op wat er gaande is in onze instellingen, waar we net met veel moeite een Electronische Leeromgeving hebben geïntroduceerd.

Meeting in Amsterdam: meeting notes available

IMG_5725
Originally uploaded by wytze

Yesterday we had a cosy meeting in Amsterdam. We came together in the Albert Einstein room. Sound a lot better than "0.10" or whatever. It inspired us to be creative and constructive at the same time. Check it out at our website:
Meeting notes of edition 2.1 of Sakai SIG NL (19 sep 2007) !
I am very happy with one result from the meeting: other people, namely Jaeques, Jan and Frank stood up to assist me in creating our pre-conference "Everything you need to know about Sakai" for the next SURF Onderwijsdagen (only in Dutch). One of the keynote speakers at the Onderwijsdagen is Stephen Downes; don't miss it!

Agenda for Sep 19, 2007

Next week the Sakai Special Interest Group NL will meet in Amsterdam, as announced before. Everyone is cordially invited to attend. There is no obligation to register or whatever (although a little note is appreciated!).
We will discuss the plans for the coming year (the current members of the Sakai SIG NL already received a draft document concering our plans), as well as current developments within our institutions. Especially the Saxion University and the University of Amsterdam (the host for this meeting) will fill us in on their current projects.
Furthermore I surely want to discuss how we will create a great pre-conference workshop at the largest elearning fair in The Netherlands for Higher Ed, the SURF Onderwijsdagen. This pre-conference workshop will take place on November 13. Mark your agenda's!
All details on the agenda for next week are, as always, available online (in Dutch). If you cannot attend our meeting, please let me know.

It is now public: Sakai is on hold

Sakai in de ijskast - UT Nieuws
Originally uploaded by wytze

Several weeks ago we mentioned that our final report of our Sakai pilots was available. Today our university newspaper features an article where you can read (in Dutch) the decisions that have been made by our board, with some comments by my colleague Stanley Portier.
Our board has urged us to put some serious effort in evaluating the MS Sharepoint 2007 product. This should be our sole focus for the coming months.
The fact that very few institutions in The Netherlands are investigating Sakai, is an important factor in the decision of our board to steer in the direction of Sharepoint (for which there seems to be more interest within our sector).
Final decisions will made early in 2008. We will keep you posted.

Did you know?

Did you know that all board meetings of the Sakai Foundation are documented and are available for everyone to see? Check here for all the minutes. Don't get disappointed too quickly, because you see a long list of documents... You want to read the minutes of the last meeting, don't you? Well, click here.
Did you know that there are several interesting listings. Just to name a few:

1. the Sakai installations that we know of on a map,
2. the Sakai sites in a long list (143 items and still counting) with all technical details (e.g. Georgia Tech, or Lubeck), or
3. a status page where you will find information on all Contrib projects?

We'll meet again in September

DSC03687
Originally uploaded by wytze

Summer vacation is now officially over here in The Netherlands. At our campus the so-called introduction period has started (see photo) for our new students. Next week, classes will start.
The first meeting of the Sakai SIG NL has also been planned, in close cooperation with Jaeques Koeman (University of Amsterdam). We will meet, at the University of Amsterdam, on Sept 19. Details about location and time: 10:00 - 14:00, room T1.10 (ground floor), Instituut voor Interdisciplinaire Studies, Sarphatistraat 104, 1018 GV Amsterdam , click for location on Google map .
Details about the final programme will be communicated later, but please block this date in your calender. And if you would like to be a presenter at this meeting, please make yourself known!

Get your proposals ready!

The next Sakai conference is already in the making (did you notice that the domain is "sakai.educonference.com"?). I have heard about some great names as possible keynote speakers (Michael tells something about it).
But before i lose you: this post is about us, you and me. We can submit proposals and the deadline is September 15, 2007.
Shall we use the tag "sakainewportbeach07" for all news regarding this upcoming conference in Newport Beach?

Fedora Commons gets funding!

Great news that I recently heard about Fedora. They have been awarded a $4.9M Grant to Develop Open-Source Software for Building Collaborative Information Communities. From the press release:
"Fedora Commons today announced the award of a four year, $4.9M grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop the organizational and technical frameworks necessary to effect revolutionary change in how scientists, scholars, museums, libraries, and educators collaborate to produce, share, and preserve their digital intellectual creations. Fedora Commons is a new non-profit organization that will continue the mission of the Fedora Project, the successful open-source software collaboration between Cornell University and the University of Virginia."
Who is Gordon Moore you would ask? He was was one of the founders of Intel, and is known for "Moore's Law". Wikipedia tells you what this law is about, in case you didn't know.

Comparing apples and oranges

If you are a member of del.icio.us you can a create a so-called 'subscription'. This means that you can pinch in some tag(s) and then get access to all the links of all the users of del.icio.us that have used that same tag(s) in their collection of links.
Through my subcription to the tag 'sakai' I found a very nice article. It is called Is Open Source Right for You?. The article clearly identifies some important factors in considering open source, and Sakai for that matter: "So what makes an organization a good candidate for open source? And is open source mature enough yet to be considered a viable alternative to commercial learning management systems, particularly for use in corporate environments?

Here's a look at several factors any organization contemplating open source should put on its "must list" to consider."
The article make an important distinction between a course management system (CMS) and a Learning Management System (LMS). I always sort of tried not to think of this distinction, but it is indeed important to have a good understanding of the differences. For one: a LMS has clear administrative functions that a typical CMS doesn't have. An LMS is therefore mostly used in a corporate environment, in contrast to a CMS, that is typically used in Higher Ed (or education in general).

Time to start writing!!!

Through the wonders of Bloglines, I came across (again!) the weblog by Scott Wilson. He pointed me to the JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. This is a great resource! I highly recommend it. And then I read this:
"The June 2008 issue of JOLT will be a special issue, centered on the topic of next generation learning/course management systems (L/CMS). (..) new technologies present diverse ideas and opportunities for engaged e-learning (..)."
Themes that are mentioned for this special issue are (e.g.) "Open source vs commercial environments" or "Best practices in teaching within the L/CMS".
Time to get writing! The proposal deadline is Feb 29, 2008.
The Sakai community should have at least one feature article in this special issue, shouldn't we?

New institution using Sakai

Sometimes you are confronted with a pleasant surprise. This time it came to me trough my email. I was asked to comment on a choice between Sakai and Moodle as possible course management system for Academia Vitae. I had never heard of this educational institution before in my life. And to make it worse: they are located in Deventer, which is quite close to my hometown.
Academia Vitae is a privately-funded institution that provides educational programmes for young professionals and more experienced professionals. They have taken the model of a classic university and liberal arts and sciences. They offer several broad programmes to the students. Their ICT strategy is geared towards opensource, therefore their shortlist contained Sakai and Moodle. Not even before I properly had responded to their questions in their first email, I received a second email that they had chosen Sakai. One of the reasons mentioned in favor of Sakai, is the educational model of Moodle that doesn't really fit the philosophy of Academia Vitae.
Academia Vitae will be working with Edia (the company that brought us Sakai on a stick) in implementing Sakai.

Standards: a lot of useful information from JISC!

The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), based in the UK, has a great Standards Catalogue. The information has been collated by UKOLN (Brian Kelly). This kind of resource is, for me, very valuable. Otherwise I would have been surfing the net endlessly.
The information is not restricted to purely 'open' standards, which (at this moment in time, that is) is understandable. The information is also not restricted to e-learning standards, but also standards in the field of text editing or images. Sometimes you need to be a little pragmatic. All standards are documented in the same way (based on a template). What is very nice that there are headings like "Risk Asessment" and "Take-up Elsewhere" for every entry. The approach of JISC with regard to standards is also explained.
I found a wiki, which is the working area, where 'everyone' can edit. And there is a website, that holds more permanent (and pertinent?) information. Go find out for yourself what you think!
Some standards that you will find explained:

1. Binary text documents, such as DOC, RTF, ODF, or PDF
2. Image standards: for example SVG, TIFF or PNG
3. Examples of multimedia standards: ACC, MP3, ASF
4. Metadata: DIDL, RDF, RSS
5. E-learning standards: Learning Design, Content Packaging, IMS Enterprise, QTI
   

The photos of Amsterdam

It is vacation time... Nothing much will happen in the coming weeks. We will be back in the middle in August.
I have created a post with some visual appeal with SideFlickr to keep you 'satisfied'. It is a slideshow from my Amsterdam conference photo set.

What are we going to do?

sakaisignl20070704_8
Originally uploaded by wytze

In our last meeting, on July 4, we discussed improvements we could make to the operations of the Sakai SIG NL. One of the suggestions was that we should make use of locations other than the SURFfoundation offices. Also it was suggested that, when having a meeting at a certain location, the location 'owner' would be responsible for the organisation of the meeting (e.g. inviting speakers, organise lunch etc). This also fits nicely with what we have dubbed 'distributed leadership'.
The first meeting of the next year, meeting 2.1, will most possibly be held at the University of Amsterdam. But also Saxion Hogescholen, Portfolio4U and A New Spring have offered to host a meeting in the coming year. Stay tuned for exact dates.
Please read the slide and also the meeting notes in the powerpoint presentation over at our website if you want to know all the details: http://elearning.surf.nl/sakai_en/sakai_in_nl/4566.

Amsterdam Conference videos online

It took a week extra but the videos of the 7th conference in Amsterdam are online. They are available at the following website: http://mediasite.uva.nl/mediasite/catalog/

under de Sakai button.
Unfortunately non-ms window users might experience some problems.
The mediasite application is optimized for microsoft file formats.
The video file format is *.wmv

Individual links to presentations listed according to the conference agenda:

Pre Conference 11 june: ( Matterhorn 2) - Morning:

Introduction Sakai (1):


Introduction Sakai (2):


Afternoon:

Introduction to OSP (1):


Introduction to OSP (2):


Introduction to OSP (3):


12 june ( Matterhorn 1,2,3)

Opening of 7th Sakai Conference June 2007


Morning (Matterhorn 3)

Inclusive Design and..


An Introduction to FLUID...


Sakai UI design patterns


Sakai technical futures


Afternoon:

Mneme: test center...


Welcome speech Paul Doop ...


13 june (Matterhorn 1) - Morning:

Learning styles and the online...


Open courseware pedagogy...


Innovative pedagogyin a dual ...


Lams V2 an Sakai ...


Afternoon:

Open-CLE an open standard...


Student interaction with ...

Matterhorn 1,2,3:

Technical demonstation...


14 june (zurich 1) - Morning:

The use and integration of Sakai ...


Off to fast start OSP in Dutch ...


Sakai/OSP portfolio ...


Collaborating in a new Paradigm ...


Gt Sakai implementation ...

Afternoon:

Sakai Accessibility Update ...


Closing and thank you ...

Final report in English (University of Twente)

The project team at the University of Twente has recently finished their pilot project Campus Blend using Sakai (CBUS in short). In this project Sakai was evaluated on different aspects. Evaluation was done on technical aspects, educational and functional aspects as well as community aspects.
Extensive results and conclusion on the aforementioned aspects are all to be found in the final report, that has been translated into English for everyone to read. Go to http://www.utwente.nl/elo, where you can download your (electronic) copy of the report.

{Dutch} Waarom geen opensource in het Hoger Onderwijs?

This post will be mostly in Dutch...
Ruben van Wendel de Joode (TU Delft) reflects on some recent research that concludes that not even one institution for Higher Education in The Netherlands uses an opensource product in when it comes to a VLE or CMS.
Ruben heeft het onderzoek van de Open Universiteit gelezen dat in het kader van het e-Learning research programma van SURFfoundation onlangs is verschenen. Hij begint zijn review als volgt:
"Met groeiende belangstelling en verbazing heb ik zojuist op een druilerige zondagavond het rapport gelezen over een door SURF foundation gefinancierd onderzoek naar de adoptie van open source elektronische leeromgevingen in het hoger onderwijs. In de inleiding, die begint op pagina 7, staat voor mij de meest essentiële uitkomst van het hele onderzoek. Van de 33 hoger onderwijsinstellingen die de enquête hebben ingevuld, maakt er niet één gebruik van open source in de elektronische leeromgeving (elo). Een opmerkelijke uitkomst."
Lees meer in Belangrijkste vraag blijft onbeantwoord.