Sakai is serious about internationalization

Within the Sakai community, everyone does tremendous work. Some of us work hard on the code of Sakai, others on quality, others on clear requirements and there is a group working on the user experience (done trhough the Fluid project). Today I want to highlight another important aspect of the Sakai community. This is the group of people that work hard on Sakai for the users in non-English speaking countries. This is the Internationalization Working Group, where Beth Kirschner is the coordinator.
This group not only deals with pure translation of everthing that's inside Sakai. No, they really do "Internationalization", which means that Sakai will also adhere to conventions in other countries. Just to name one issue within this realm: date and time formatting. Over here in Europe we don't use the AM and PM convention. We have 24 hours in one day!
If you want to know what's being worked on, please go to Known I18N problems - WG: I18N & L10N - Confluence, where you will find the Top Internationalization Problems. There is also a Internationalization dashboard (hosted in Amsterdam), that shows you how many files have been internationalized so far. There is also a page with current information on the Dutch translation. Still some work to be done! Good to know: LOI, Portfolio4u, Edia and A New Spring have joined forces to get things done. These are all commercial companies working with Sakai in The Netherlands.

ccLearn: very promising ideas!

ccLearn was 'publicly' launched during the Sakai conference in Amsterdam in June of this year (picture of Hal Abelson). ccLearn has made some interesting progress. ccLearn is partnering with Google to create a so-called "Web-scale open education search". Please check it out at:

Open Education Search — ccLearn

Institutions have done amazing work creating and publishing OERs on the web, but the infrastructure to fully realize the value of these investments is still at the Web 1.0 level. Web-scale open education search is a component of taking the OER ecosystem to the next level, as well as a driver for interoperability and standards across OER implementations. (..) the goal is to increase the visibility and traffic to all specialized
OER repositories. There will always be a need for repositories that
focus on specific subsets of OER or allow for interaction with OER in
specialized ways. Our belief is that web-scale search will enable a
quantum leap in the awareness and utilization of OER by directing
interested users to existing sites more successfully.

{Dutch} Alan Berg on Sakai

Alan Berg works at the University of Amsterdam. He wrote a piece on Sakai (in Dutch), with some interesting comments by fellow Sakai followers at the University of Amsterdam. Just go here: Open source LMS Sakai gedijt goed aan de UvA

De afgelopen week (van 4 tot en met 6 december) werd in de Amerikaanse stad Newport Beach de '8th Sakai Conference' gehouden, een conferentie over de open source digitale leeromgeving Sakai. Een van de deelnemers was Alan Berg, senior developer en 'fulltime probleemoplosser' binnen de Onderwijs- & Onderzoek Dienstengroep (ODG) van de Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA). In onderstaand artikel beschrijft hij de aard van Sakai, de relatie tussen Sakai en de UvA en houdt hij een rondgang langs een aantal betrokkenen.

Apples & pears

The keynote of day two by Bob Sutor, VP of open source and standards at IBM was partly about something very familiar to Dutch innovators in Higher Education. Sutor spoke about something that has also been coined 'Generation Einstein' in the Netherlands. A new generation of learners entering the schools with a lot of computer skills and therefore more technological demands. But his talk 'from closed to open' was also about the role of open software in this development. Reasoning from the deception that the new generation faces when confronted with 'boring' educational software, open source developments in conjuction with the 'read/write' web 2.0 offer a possibility to start creating better educational systems that meet the demands of the new learners.

UC Berkely showed some of this in practise as they demonstrated their 'OpenCast' initiative. In collaboration with Apple they work on an architecture for producing, sharing and delivering webcasts in education. And it integrates with Youtube too, speaking about new demands. All together a far from trivial and challenging combination of technology, didactic concepts, new (open) business logic and so forth.
Like the OpenCast project, a general observation is that there are many professional and well-structured developments going on, that are either built in Sakai or integrated with it. Just take Sakai as given and you can put energy in shaping the environment to your philosophy of education.

I will be representing the Dutch Sakai SIG in the panel session “Sakai in your backyard' about organizing regional Sakai events. And it actually feels a bit like the backyard when I have to mention that in the Netherlands we are still busy comparing apples with pears in the backyard, whereas we should be reasoning about what kind of neat features and innovations we could develop within the community! Take Sakai as given, and direct the resources to make Sakai match optimally to your philosophy of education. Sometimes i think this is what it's all about: either you model the software to your organisation (open source) or you model your organisation to the software you have (closed source).

Next up for today is the technical demo of the Sign-up tool that Porfolio4U and Edia developed in the last month. A hot item because it turned out to be a classic case of concurrent development. Yale university, Stanford university and University of Michigan have or have had Sign-up projects. So what will happen? Can we agree to synchronize requirements and come up with one tool, or will there be different sign-up tools in the future? Think of it, there are in fact a lot of use cases for a sign-up tool, ranging from student meetings, tutoring sessions or even seminars and workshops.
Does anybody know a good alternative name for a tool that allows people to sign up for events such as seminars, workshops and the like?

Connexions and Sakai?

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Originally uploaded by swedishcoins

Through the photostream of Magnus (Stockholm University) I found this piece of great news: the Connexions project (at Rice University) is looking at the Sakai community (and Foundation). That would be good news if these two movements came together in the near future!
There is more stuff coming from Sweden! This is a weblog that I recently discovered: the Swedish Learning Space.

Day One in Newport Beach

Today the main Sakai conference started in Newport Beach, about 55 miles south of Los Angeles. The hotel and surroundings (picture taken from the hotel) provide an excellent environment for the coming days. I have been told that 411 people have registered for the conference, and I have counted three Dutchmen among them.

So what was on this morning? The day started off with an inspiring key note talk by Joel Thierstein, Executive Director of Connexions and Associate Provost of Rice University. The Connexions platform is definitely worth some further investigation. From a conceptual point of view, one could compare it with Dutch activities within the ‘educatieve contentketen’. Like in the Netherlands , (business)models of open content, re-use and sharing within a community are new, and therefore also require new and challenging forms of governance and leadership within such communities.

In another session, 'converting from an existing course management system to Sakai' by David Melone, I heard some interesting remarks on integrating Sakai with an existing Question Mark Perception instance. I turns out that they are interested in sharing an LDAP between the two systems and possibly report QMP grades to the Sakai gradebook. Since the University of Amsterdam now uses a QMP instance for their ICTO - Digital testing programme, I think it might be something to keep on our radar.

The Sakai Foundation executive director Micheal Korcuska gave an update on the Sakai Foundation in the third session. It seems that there has been a good debate within the foundation about the mission statement of Sakai and the priorities of the Sakai Foundation. The mission could be ‘Beat Blackboard’ , but Michael came up with a few more thoughtful statements:

· Create flexibility for education
· Facilitate innovation
· Reduce total costs of VLE’s
· Increase user satisfaction
· Promote openness

Next to that the two top priorities of the Sakai foundation should be to ‘create the highest quality core software’ and ‘Seek to engage new members of the community’.Regarding the last point, there is in fact some debate about the adoption of Sakai. The question is whether it is desired to have ( a lot) more institutions new to Sakai at this moment and seeing the complexity of managing the already large community rise.
This discussion also relates to the type of institutions, e.g community colleges, corporations etc. that are moving into the direction of Sakai. Mike Zackrison, vice-president of marketing and strategy at rSmart also touched on the debate in his session. rSmart has done a survey investigating various types of institutions and their future plans with regard to (open source) VLE’s, and they found some interesting issues. Those who are interested should contact rSmart to get a copy of the survey results. What made the talk especially interesting is that there seem to be differences in views on open source across different types of institutions. For example the rSmart survey concluded that community colleges (in the U.S) see open source as risky and do not tend to be interested in Sakai. Well, we all now that in The Netherlands community colleges have the largest install base of Sakai-OSP in the Dutch educational system, using the hosted solution by Portfolio4u. That shows the need of more market investigations throughout different regions and sharing them with the community, because the Sakai Foundation is debating these issues! The general idea however about the adoption of Sakai is that an increase of institutions using Sakai would be the preferred development. And in the end that is no surprise to me.

Make me jealous!

Unfortunately I cannot attend the current Sakai conference. So my question is: is anyone taking pictures at the conference (and outside the conference)? Can I see them?

Sakaiger in Amsterdam

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Originally uploaded by wytze

Just before all Sakaigers boarded their private planes to Newport Beach (where the next Sakai conference is held; I will not be there, unfortunately), one of the bunch visited the Portfolio4u offices in Amsterdam. He (or is she?) was talked about......
Do you want to see where Sakaiger(s) have been so far? Check out the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sakaiger

Thoughts on the Sakai future...

It is the time of the year again. No, I do not mean Christmas etc. I mean the Sakai Board Elections are underway.
Michael Korcuska has set up a space on Confluence, where current Board members and candidates have posted a vision for the future of Sakai (at least for 2008). Michael himself has also written out some interesting thoughts on this page. Absolutely worth the read, even I you don't have the privilege to vote.
One candidate, Michael Feldstein, uses his own weblog to communicate with us, the voters. He recently wrote an interesting analysis regarding the Sakai future:

Within every university I talk to these days, I find three factions with respect to instructional technology. How big or powerful each faction is and who is in it varies from place to place, but the factions are always the same.

Faction #1 ("give me something off-the-rack") is the biggest faction in most institutions, also in The Netherlands.

Presentations available

SURFfoundation has been so kind to put our presentations online on SlideShare already (they are in Dutch).
So here's the introduction by Wytze:

| View

And the presentation by Frank that gives some more details about the history of Sakai and the way the software is produced:

| View

Exhausted after the pre-conference

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Originally uploaded by Gerard Dummer

Yesterday we (from left to right: Jaeques Koeman, Jan van den Berge, Wytze Koopal, Frank Benneker) delivered our pre-conference at the SURF Onderwijsdagen. Gerard Dummer was so kind to take a picture of us after the pre-conference. I must say that I was quite exhausted after the 3 hour session (can you see it?).

We will have enough participants!

A few weeks ago I put up an announcement that we would be doing a pre-conference workshop on Nov 13 (tomorrow!) at the SURF Onderwijsdagen (one of the largest conferences on elearning in The Netherlands with some 600 people in attendance). A little less than 20 people have signed up for the pre-conference workshop, which sounds like a reasonable amount to me.
So, today we are heavily preparing our workshop. The agenda (in Dutch) can be found online (a Google document).

What if... this was your last lecture?

This has been picked up already in the blogosphere and on news sites, here, in the New York Times, or here.... But anyway.
The concept of the 'last lecture' is meant for professors to really think about what they would like to tell in their last lecture. A few 'last lectures' already have been given. A really powerful concept, isn't it? Forget all the humbug and daily routines: you have just so little time to deliver your last lecture. It better be good!
Recently, professor Randy Pausch really gave his last lecture. This wasn't just an exercise for him, since he has pancreatic cancer and only has a few months left to live. Just take a look at the video for a few minutes: it is really impressive. The video is brought to us under a Creative Commons license ("The video and transcript will technically be under a "creative commons" license, which will be a legal way of saying that you may use them for non-commercial purposes, so long as you don't alter them, and you give attribution. Please bear with me; figuring out that legal stuff is secondary to my other priorities.")

Please apply now!

Just a quick note: the Sakai Foundation seeks an User Experience Lead. Check out the job description at LinkedIn: "We have a unique opportunity for a talented individual to play a key leadership role in a global open source project that is developing a system for teaching, learning, and research in HIgher Education. The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (http://www.sakaiproject.org) is being adopted by many colleges and universities around the world."

[Dutch] Kom je naar onze pre-conference?

This is about the pre-conference that you can attend on Nov 13 in Utrecht (Jaarbeurs) at the SURF Onderwijsdagen 2007.
========== Begin press release ===============
"Iedere bezoeker van de SURF Onderwijsdagen zal wel eens van Sakai gehoord hebben. Maar nog weinigen hebben Sakai zelf aan den lijve ondervonden of er mee gewerkt. Een goed oordeel vellen over Sakai is dan moeilijk. Zowel de Universiteit Twente als de Universiteit van Amsterdam hebben uitgebreide ervaring met Sakai. Door middel van kleine opdrachten zullen we de deelnemers laten ervaren wat Sakai is.
Maar we gaan meer doen in deze pre-conference: we gaan ook uitleg geven over community source, over de Sakai Foundation, over het hoe en waarom van opensource etc.
We verwachten enige voorbereiding van de deelnemers. Zie http://sakai-nl.blogspot.com."
========= End press release =================
Onze pre-conferentie is een co-productie van Wytze Koopal (Universiteit Twente), Jaeques Koeman en Frank Benneker (Universiteit van Amsterdam) en Jan van den Berge (Portfolio4u).
Als je je wilt opgeven, ga dan naar http://www.surf.nl/owd2007. Als je onderwerpen of suggesties hebt voor de pre-conference, laat het ons dan weten. Bijvoorbeeld via een reactie op dit bericht.

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

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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!