[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter August 20, 2009
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Sun Aug 23 12:20:17 PDT 2009
Sakai Newsletter
August 20, 2009
1. From the Executive Director
2. UC Berkeley News Article: "Communal Webcasting Platform to Beef
Up Campus's Popular Educational Content"
3. rSmart Hosting a Free Sakai Training Workshop: Sakai Summer
Institute -- Build a course in Sakai CLE
4. Unicon Announces New Hosting Services for Sakai and Moodle
5. Recent Email Group Discussions
6. Events
-------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
As you may know, John Norman stepped down as Board Chair when he
joined the Product Council. The Board has elected Josh Baron as the
new Chair. Congratulations to Josh!
As Lance and Clay have stepped down from the Board entirely as part of
their new roles on the Sakai Foundation staff, the Board Members are
currently:
Josh Baron, Chair
Lois Brooks, Vice-Chair
Mara Hancock (appointed to fill Clay's seat for the remainder of his
term)
Joseph Hardin
Stephen Marquard
John Norman
Jutta Treviranus
Lois, Mara and Joseph's terms will be ending this calendar year.
Because the Sakai bylaws require a minimum 7 Board Members, we will
likely be electing at least 4 new Board Members this election cycle
(which will be in October/November).
As a reminder, the Board has proposed a revision of the bylaws to
allow up to 2 appointed members. You can see the details of the
proposal on the Sakai wiki: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/
f4DnAw The voting on this proposal will take place in September, so
please get your comments in ASAP.
Cheers,
Michael Korcuska
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
mkorcuska at sakaifoundation.org
phone: +1 510-859-4247 (google voice)
skype: mkorcuska
-------------------------------------
2. Communal Webcasting Platform to Beef Up Campus's Popular
Educational Content
Published in UC Berkeley News http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/07/28_matterhorn.shtml
As a growing number of worldwide learners log on, free of charge, to
video and podcast lectures and events at the University of California,
Berkeley, the campus is leading an international effort to build a
communal Webcasting platform to more easily record and distribute its
popular educational content.
Dubbed "Opencast Matterhorn" and funded with grants from the Andrew W.
Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations totaling $1.5
million, the project will bring together programmers and educational
technology experts from an international consortium of higher
education institutions, including ETH Zürich in Switzerland,
University of Osnabrück in Germany, Cambridge University in the United
Kingdom and Canada's University of Saskatchewan.
Through the Web, Matterhorn members from around the world will develop
"open source" software designed to automate their recording and
posting of academic content, making the process less costly and labor
intensive. The $1.5 million in funding for the project includes
$220,000 for planning and design activities that have taken place over
the past year.
"Right now, colleges and universities want to provide their academic
resources to students and global learners but are stymied by high
technical barriers and costs. Opencast Matterhorn holds the promise of
significantly lowering these barriers by developing open source
software that meets the specific needs of academic institutions," said
Mara Hancock, UC Berkeley's director of educational technologies and
director of the Opencast Matterhorn project.
The software will support the scheduling, capture, encoding and
delivery of educational content to video-and-audio sharing sites such
as YouTube and iTunes, so that learners can access lectures when and
where they need it. With additional funding, expertise and labor from
other members of the consortium, the Opencast Matterhorn platform is
scheduled to be up and running by summer 2010.
"Opencast Matterhorn entails more than just video capture and
processing. It's also about tools and features that allow all of us to
shape the media into something that's more meaningful for the learner
to engage with," said Adam Hochman, UC Berkeley project manager for
Opencast Matterhorn. For example, students and lifelong learners will
have access to a suite of "engage" tools, including bookmarking and
annotations. Coursecasting is a growing trend in educational
technology, enabling students and the general public to download audio
and video recordings of class lectures to their computers and portable
media devices. This latest innovation will solidify UC Berkeley's
position as a leader in knowledge-sharing through open access Internet
channels, campus officials said.
UC Berkeley has been making its academic content available to the
public since 2001 and maintains a growing inventory of video content
supplied by taped events and lecture rooms that are wired for
automated webcasting. In 2007, UC Berkeley became the first university
to make videos of full courses available through YouTube. Course
topics include bioengineering, peace and conflict studies, "Physics
for Future Presidents," "Environmental Law & Policy," and "General
Psychology."
"Students and lifelong learners are becoming increasingly aware of the
value of audio and video content that supports their learning, and
universities are becoming more committed to providing that service to
students," said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley vice provost for
teaching and learning and principal investigator for the Hewlett and
Mellon grants. The project is very much in step with the campus's open
source tradition. In the 1970s, UC Berkeley's Computer Systems
Research Group laid the foundation for today's open source community.
The group developed Berkeley Software Distribution, also known as
Berkeley Unix, whose popularity among academics led to the widespread
adoption of the Unix operating system. Since then, UC Berkeley has
played a leadership role in other worldwide open source projects such
as Sakai, Fluid, CollectionSpace and Kuali.
As opposed to proprietary software, open source software makes its
program source code available to the public, giving users access to
core design functionalities and allowing them to tweak and add
features. The software is licensed so that individuals are free to
adopt and change it for their own needs.
Other institutions partnering in Opencast Matterhorn are the
University of Vigo in Spain, University of Toronto, University of
Copenhagen, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Northwestern University in
Illinois, Open University of Catalonia in Spain, Indiana University
and the Josef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.
"Our partners have created their own version of an academic webcasting
system, and so bring a wealth of expertise and lessons learned to the
project," said Hancock. "Through this collaboration, Matterhorn will
gain the benefit of that collective knowledge."
Yasmin Anwar
Media Relations
-------------------------------------
3. rSmart Hosting a Free Sakai Training Workshop: Sakai Summer
Institute -- Build a Course in Sakai CLE
Join us August 31, 2009 for half-day workshop! During this half-day
workshop, attendees will create a pilot course in a live, hosted
instance of Sakai. Participants will learn to build content,
assessments, and encourage collaboration with Sakai tools. They will
learn how to configure Sakai tools and course permissions and add
students into the course. At the end of the workshop, each participant
will have a course built that they can run for an entire semester.
Attendees need a computer with internet connection for the workshop.
It is recommended that attendees have a syllabus on hand, as well.
Title: Build a Course in Sakai CLE
Day: August 31, 2009
Time: 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM, 12:00 PM-2:00 PM PDT
There will be a 60 minute lunch break given between 11:00 AM - 12:00
PM PDT.
To register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/580074513
Megan Perrone
megan.perrone at rsmart.com
-------------------------------------
4. Unicon Announces New Hosting Services for Sakai and Moodle
Unicon, Inc. has announced new application hosting services for higher
education institutions wanting to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) of open source learning management systems Sakai and Moodle.
Unicon's hosting service fully supports the community source code
versions of the open source software, and delivers a feature-rich,
fully functional learning management solution based on the
comprehensive out-of-the box product capabilities available in Sakai
and Moodle. Unicon's new services are designed to help academic
institutions maximize their productivity and reduce TCO through
offsite application hosting, outsourced IT services, and the use of
open source applications and platforms. The program will enable
institutions to focus their valuable IT resources on core competencies
and mission critical internal projects.
"Unicon understands the challenges higher education institutions face
when trying to maintain high IT service levels with ever-shrinking
budgets," said John C. Blakley, CEO of Unicon, Inc. "Unicon's new
hosting services for Sakai and Moodle will enable institutions to
reduce TCO, while also improving the scalability, manageability and
reliability of their open source learning management systems." Since
1993, Unicon's consulting group has provided over 175 colleges and
universities, Fortune 100 companies and global publishers with
software consulting, support and related services.
About Unicon's New Application Hosting Services -- Two of the fastest-
growing IT trends for reducing TCO are the hosting of IT applications
and implementation of open source solutions. Unicon's new application
hosting services effectively combine these two strategies to provide
significant cost savings and productivity gains. Academic institutions
can select from hosting options with support for Dedicated Server
Hosting or Cloud Hosting, providing either standard or high
availability. For more information, visit:http://www.unicon.net/services/hosting
.
Joe Waldygo
joe at topspinpr.com
-------------------------------------
5. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] [WG: Sakai QA] Jira process clarification and
modification - "Target Version"
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Jira-process-clarification-and-modification-Target-Version-td3484191.html#a3484191
[Building Sakai] Roster + cglib issue
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Roster-cglib-issue-td3489838.html#a3489838
[Building Sakai] site stats: counting .anon visitors
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-site-stats-counting-anon-visitors-td3490418.html#a3490418
[Building Sakai] 2.6.x branch version
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-2-6-x-branch-version-td3488028.html#a3488028
[Building Sakai] Sakai - Sakaibrary integration
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Sakai-Sakaibrary-integration-td3479370.html#a3479370
[Building Sakai] A Goal Management 2.6.x heads up
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-A-Goal-Management-2-6-x-heads-up-td3478943.html#a3478943
[Building Sakai] Load test of Sakai
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Load-test-of-Sakai-td3477487.html#a3477487
[Building Sakai] Site Helper and E-Mail messages
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Site-Helper-and-E-Mail-messages-td3479002.html#a3479002
[Using Sakai Teaching & Learning] Thoughts on a New Focus for the
Sakai Teaching and Learning Group
http://n2.nabble.com/Thoughts-on-a-New-Focus-for-the-Sakai-Teaching-and-Learning-Group-td3473008.html#a3473008
[Portfolio] scaling for university-wide portfolio
http://n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-scaling-for-university-wide-portfolio-td3438350.html#a3438350
[Portfolio] IE8 and 2.6 Portofolios tool
http://n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-IE8-and-2-6-Portofolios-tool-td3345987.html#a3345987
-------------------------------------
6. Events
AuSakai '09
September 17-18, 2009
Charles Sturt University Bathurst Campus
Bathurst NSW, Australia
http://www.csu.edu.au/division/landt/ausakai09/ausakai09.htm
1st Workshop: Learning Management Systems meet Adaptive Learning
Environments (LMS-ALE'09)
September 29 - October 2, 2009
EC-TEL
Nice, France
http://wwwis.win.tue.nl/lms-ale-09
The Jasig Fall 2009 Unconference September 28 - 30 Unconference
sessions;
October 1-2
Developer meetings Urbana Champaign I Hotel and Conference Center
University of Illinois
Urbana - Champaign, Illinois
Assessment Institute in Indianapolis
October 25-27, 2009
The Westin Indianapolis
Indianapolis, Indiana
http://www.planning.iupui.edu/institute
Online Educa Berlin 2009
December 2-4, 2009
Hotel InterContinental Berlin
Berlin, Germany
http://www.online-educa.com/the-conference
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