Sakai 3 komt er aan!

Sakai 3 wordt binnenkort uitgebracht. Sakai 3 wordt heel anders dan de huidige Saka 2.x versies. Lees meer over of en wanneer je moet instappen op Sakai 3 in het bericht van Michael Feldstein "Sakai 3: What It Is and When To Move To It:

When will Sakai 3 be “ready”? When is a good time to migrate? If I’m under pressure to migrate in the short term, what should I do? Should I go to Sakai 2 and migrate later? Or is that like trying to leap the Grand Canyon in two hops? These are tough questions, in large part because they depend a lot on the specifics of your institution. I’m going to do my best to provide some guidelines here and, in the process, provide some context about what Sakai 3 is as well as how the Sakai community is working together on it.

De University of Cambridge zal één van de eerste gebruikers van Sakai 3 zijn, is de verwachting. Maar je kunt ook rustig afwachten tot 2012 voordat je overstapt naar Sakai 3, en nu gewoon beginnen met Sakai 2.x. Er wordt een migratie-scenario uitgewerkt voor een overstap van Sakai 2 naar Sakai 3.

Sakai bij TU Eindhoven

Edia heeft recent een Sakai omgeving online gebracht voor de TU Eindhoven. Via www.digitaalproefstuderen.nl wordt VWO leerlingen de mogelijkheid geboden om inhoudelijk kennis te maken met studeren aan de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. Door mee te doen aan digitaal proefstuderen kan een kijkje worden genomen in het onderwijs van de TU/E. Mooi initiatief!

Nieuwe releases van Sakai

De nieuwste release van Sakai, versie 2.6.0, is recent uitgebracht. Tevens is er ook maintenance release (versie 2.5.5) uitgebracht, voor diegenen die nog op deze versie (willen blijven) werken. Zie verder « Michael Korcuska Sakai Blog

I’m very pleased to announce that Sakai 2.6.0 is now officially available! Source, binary and demo distributions are available for download. For more information on what’s included in the release, see the release summary (in powerpoint) and the documentation page (in its fancy new format!).

This release is the second time we’ve taken Sakai through a revised process we originally put in place for 2.5. This process took the release through several beta and release candidate stages. While there will always be bugs in large complicated software packages like Sakai, we’re certain that the extra effort an attention that the community put into this process has resulted in a significantly higher quality release. In fact this process caused some significant delays to the release date as we found important bugs that needed to be fixed before the software was released (more on this below).

Bezoek Dr. Chuck aan Vrije Universiteit

Toen ik Chuck in januari mailde met de vraag of hij nog op de hoogte was van onderwijsontwikkelingen op basis van de Google App Engine antwoordde dat hij dat hij bezig was met Cloudsocial (http://www.cloudsocial.org/). Bovendien ging hij binnenkort toch naar Zuid-Afrika (?) en moest toch overstappen via Schiphol. Hij was gaarne bereid om ons de Vu een bezoek te brengen. Deze gelegenheid hebben we met beide handen aangegrepen. Vrijdag 20 feb heeft hij ons bezocht. Naast CloudSocial hebben we het natuurlijk ook over Sakai gehad. Wat vooral goed viel bij mijn collegae was de presentatie van Sakai 3. Het ziet er natuurlijk wel goed uit.
Zoals je wellicht weet zitten we bij de VU in een evaluatieproject van Blackboard en kijken ook naar mogelijke alternatieven.
Sakai was bij de VU al een systeem waar serieus naar werd gekeken en is mede door het bezoek en presentatie van Chuck alleen maar interessanter geworden. Wij kijken dan ook met veel interesse uit naar Cambridge en Georgia Tech die van de zomer met Sakai 3 gaan starten.

O ja, de Sakaiger is ook op de VU gesignaleerd.... (zie foto)

Edia launches Sakai Scorm demo server

Being able to play Scorm content in Sakai is a commonly heard requirement from (potential) Sakai users. Although there have been several efforts to develop a working Scorm player for Sakai, there is still no stable player available as of today.
A team from UC Davis is now developing a SCORM 2004 player for Sakai 2.5. We are strong supporters of this initiative and we decided to help find an fix some issues to get it to work on Sakai 2.5.
At this point we want to announce that we launched a demo server for the SCORM player: http://scormplayer.edia.nl

We would like to to invite people interested in Sakai and Scorm to test their Scorm content packages and if applicable, report issues.

Sakai op Educause (Orlando)

Op de komende Educause conferentie in Orlando zijn er veel sessies en evenementen die gerelateerd zijn aan Sakai en open source in het algemeen. Zoals altijd gaat er een grote groep Nederlanders naar de Educause conferentie via de zogenaamde Edutrip, die altijd zeer zorgvuldig georganiseerd wordt door SURFfoundation.
Voor die mensen is dit overzicht wellicht handig om af te drukken en mee te nemen.

Gezocht: QA director

De Sakai Foundation heeft heel weinig personeel in dienst. Eén van de belangrijkste functies is die van Quality Assurance Director. Hier worden kandidaten voor gezocht. Zie LinkedIn: Quality Assurance Director at Sakai Foundation

The Quality Assurance (QA) Director ensures that Sakai software exceeds industry norms for defects, reliability and scalability. The QA Director is responsible for coordinating the quality assurance activities of the Sakai community and staff.(..) This position can be located anywhere in the world. The QA Director reports to the Sakai Foundation Executive Director.

Blackboard en Sakai: toch samen door één deur?

De UT heeft gekozen voor Blackboard als nieuwe Elektronische Leeromgeving, zo kan op de officiële website gelezen worden. Sakai zou niet meer in beeld zijn. Maar voor universiteiten die niet kunnen of willen kiezen tussen Sakai, Moodle en/of Blackboard, is er interessant nieuws. Er is een BlackBoard Sakai connector in de maak, en ook wordt er gesproken over een BlackBoard Moodle connector.
Blackboard heeft onlangs dit belangrijke nieuws aangekondigd: ze werken samen met Syracuse University aan de Blackboard Sakai Connector (zie hier, hier of zoek met google). Charles Severance (Dr. Chuck), de voormalige Executive Director van de Sakai Foundation, heeft een uitgebalanceerde analyse geschreven van de waarde van deze ontwikkeling. Dit is zijn standpunt:

When I look at all of this, the balance tips towards being engaged in the effort and trying to influence the direction to ultimately improve the experience of teachers and learners regardless of what enterprise CMS system their school or campus happens to have installed.

Zie Dr. Chuck's Web Log: BlackBoard Sakai Connector - Inside Higher Education.

[Dutch] Sakai 2.5.0 is beschikbaar!

Na een lange en intensieve testperiode is deze week Sakai 2.5.0 beschikbaar gekomen. Er zijn vele vernieuwingen en verbeteringen in deze versie aanwezig. Alle details (in het Engels) vind je in op de Sakai 2.5.0 Release Page . Er zijn verbeteringen in het Gradebook (cijferadministratie), de Assignments (opdrachten), Portfolio en de Test & Quizzes tool (toetsomgeving). De lijst met beschikbare vertalingen is ook uitgebreid. Je kunt Sakai gebruiken in het Arabisch, Koreaans, Portugees, Zweeds en nog meer talen, waaronder natuurlijk ook Nederlands.

New video on Sakai!

Executive director of the Sakai Foundation, Michael Korcuska, presents the current information on Sakai through this short video.

This video is produced by the former executive director of the Sakai Foundation, Charles Severance :-)

Now is the time to seriously consider Sakai!

As news about the 'win' of Blackboard over Desire2Learn pours in, the Sakai Foundation also released an official statement. Michael Korcuska writes:
"This is certainly not (..) the most important part of the ongoing patent dispute. Completely separate from the Bb-D2L lawsuit, the US Patent Office will be re-examining the validity of Blackboard’s patent. The Sakai Foundation has always believed this re-examination will be the critical activity in ensuring the patent does not have a continued deleterious affect on innovation and openness in the community. (..)
This jury verdict is not a judgment that Blackboard holds a valid patent. It is an initial verdict that D2L infringed on the Blackboard patent. As such, the verdict is not that surprising. The Sakai Foundation continues to believe that the Blackboard patent should not have been awarded in the first place. (..)
Ultimately, we believe strong participation in a community-driven effort like Sakai is the best way to control your own destiny."

Share your experience with Sakai

Through an email on one of the lists, i came across this: "It is a great pleasure to send you our warmest greetings from the University of Kagoshima in Kagoshima City, Japan. We have recently launched a world-wide comparative study involving 5 of the most popular open source e-Learning platforms: MOODLE, ATUTOR, ILIAS, CLAROLINE and SAKAI".
You are kindly asked to fill in a questionnaire if you are or have been a user of any of these systems in any of three roles indicated (administrator, teacher, student). Go to
a) Survey for Administrators
http://canberra.ics.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/comp_study_LMS.php
b) Survey for Teachers/Instructors:
http://canberra.ics.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/comp_study_LMS3.php
c) Survey for Students:
http://canberra.ics.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/comp_study_LMS_5.php

How to go about with product management?

Michael Korcuska, who is the Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation, has formulated his ideas and views on product management for Sakai. Coming from a corporate background, he has some refreshing ideas that blend in nicely with the Sakai 'way of working' so far. Michael invites everyone to comment on the wiki of the Sakai Foundation.

This is really cool! Really!!!

In the last couple of days I saw some emails coming by about My Sakai. This is something very cool that our colleagues have created in Cambridge.
What is My Sakai? It is a piece of software that makes it possible to view important information from your Sakai installation in Facebook, iGoogle, Google Desktop, Mac DashBoard, an RSS reader and the Vista Sidebar, so that you don't have to go into Sakai to see the newest Resources or Announcements.
Although it is still beta software (it is a so-called Contrib tool), it sounds very promising to me. Check out the Confluence space for more information.

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?

Sakaiger in Amsterdam

IMG_8747
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

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.

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.

Final reports of University of Twente

Today we have formally finished our evaluation of Sakai (regarding community, functionality of Sakai, technical aspects and financial aspects). You will find all information and our reports on our website, http://www.utwente.nl/elo. The reports are all in the Dutch language, but they all have an extensive summary in English. The final report ("Eindadvies") is being translated in English in full as we speak.
To summarize our work: we are quite happy with Sakai (version 2.3 that is), but some functionalities should be worked on before we would go into full production. Furthermore we will need to look into MS Sharepoint regarding possible components that could fulfill some of our needs. So, all in all this boils down to a final decision that will be made in the spring of next year (2008).
Our reports now go into the formal decision process. We will keep you posted.

Question of the Week

Recently a new initiative was started by Peter Knoop (great idea!) within the Sakai community: you can vote on a question of the week through a poll.
The second poll is titled "Which three areas of Sakai do you think are the most important for your implementation?"
To respond, please access the Polls tool in the "DG: Open Forum" site on Collab. (Note: you need an account on Collab and have to be a member of this site to access the poll. If you need an account, go to Collab's home page and use the New Account tool to self-register for an account. If you are not a member of the site, then use the Membership tool in your MyWorkspace to join the site). Or click here and you will be (re)directed.
The question of the previous poll was: What version of Sakai do plan to be running in production in September 2007?
The results were
Sakai 2.1 (n=0) 0%
Sakai 2.2 (n=0) 0%
Sakai 2.3 (n=26) 24%
Sakai 2.4 (n=34) 76%