[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter November 12, 2009
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Sat Nov 14 12:03:36 PST 2009
Sakai Newsletter
November 12,2009
1. From the Executive Director
2. The New Sakai Website is Live -- Thanks team!
3. 3rd Annual TWSIA Competition Announced
4. Oxford has Upgraded to 2.6.0
5. rSmart's Sakai CLE 2.6.2 Released
6. Advanced Sakai Portfolio Training at Marist College
7. University of Amsterdam Conducts OSP Audit
8. Are You Using or Planning to Use Profile2?
9. UNC Sakai Pilot Evaluation -- Report and Slides
10. EDUCAUSE Research -- Dynamics of Supporting Sakai
11. rSmart's Sakai and Support Chosen by Johns Hopkins, UC Davis, and
Others
12. rSmart Job Openings -- Software Support Engineer and Sakai
Solutions Consultant
13. Recent Email Group Discussions
14. Events
-----------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
I'm extremely pleased to announce that Alan Berg will serve as Interim
Quality Assurance Director for the Sakai Foundation. Those of you who
have worked with Alan know that this is excellent news for the Sakai
community. In addition to assisting with the 2.7.0 release Alan will
make a number of process and technology change recommendations,
especially test automation. He will also engage with the Sakai 3
effort as time permits. Alan will be closely supported by Anthony
Whyte in his role as 2.7.0 release manager. Over the next few weeks
Alan and Anthony will work together to define an action plan that can
be implemented with the active support of the Sakai Community. In the
meantime feel free to copy both of them on questions you might have
or, better still, use the QA list.
This arrangement is made possible by an agreement with University of
Amsterdam who generously allocated Alan's time for the next few months
to serve in this capacity. I'm thankful for their contribution to the
Foundation and to the community. While Alan will still have some local
responsibilities, his main focus during this time will be Sakai QA.
Subsequently it is likely that Alan will continue to contribute to the
QA effort, specifically in executing some of the process change
recommendations he will make. During this period I will be evaluating
the QA role and looking for a candidate to fill the position in the
long term.
Welcome aboard Alan!
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Michael Korcuska
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
mkorcuska at sakaifoundation.org
phone: +1 510-859-4247 (google voice)
skype: mkorcuska
-----------------------------------------
2. The New Sakai Website is Live -- Thanks Team!
Take a look... http://sakaiproject.org
We hope you will enjoy the new Sakai website. The idea behind the
design was a better user experience. We wanted to make the content not
only more appealing to look at, but to make it easier for you to find
what you need by organizing the site into...
1. pages of information for those taking a look at Sakai for the
first time with an eye to adoption
2. pages of links to the Sakai wiki as springboards for developers,
educators, and instructional designers who want to participate in our
active design and development community, and
3. information resources to help those of you already using Sakai.
We want to thank Michael Korcuska, Sakai Foundation's Executive
Director, and our Board of Directors for initiating the redesign
project. Thanos Partners for assistance with content organization and
graphic design. Chuck Crandall of WebChuckWeb.com, Drupal-master who
turned the designer's graphics into a working website. And finally to
the outstanding efforts of two of our community member volunteers:
Nate Angell from rSmart.com and Sean Keesler from threecanoes.com,
without whose help in building out and debugging the website we could
not have done it. One final thank you goes out to the community
volunteers who "crowd-sourced" editing the video testimonials you see
throughout the site.
So look around, explore the website and take advantage of the more
centralized resources like links to the mail list archive, a group
blog for information and status reports by Sakai project leaders, and
rss feeds for Sakai news and events.
And we want to hear from you. Tell us what works, and what doesn't.
What information should be on the website that's missing? This site is
a dynamic community resource to facilitate more effective
communication and collaboration. Your suggestions and contributions
benefit everyone.
Sincerely,
Pieter Hartsook
Webmaster
Sakai Foundation Communications Manager
hartsook at sakaifoundation.com
-----------------------------------------
3. 3rd Annual TWSIA Competition Announced
The Sakai Foundation is seeking nominees for its third annual
international Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award. Representatives
from the Foundation announced next year's competition at the EDUCAUSE
Conference in Denver, Colorado. The intent of the award is to
highlight examples of innovative and transformative educational
applications of Sakai.
Applications for the 2010 TWSIA will be accepted starting in February
2010. Instructors or other interested parties can
visitwww.openedpractices.org to learn more about the award and access
an online application form and evaluation rubric. Additional
information will be posted on sakaiproject.org next month. Winners
will be awarded a trip to Denver, Colorado, to present at the 11th
International Sakai Conference and receive their award.
Entries also seed a collection of innovative practices in the
OpenEdPractices.org repository, a community of practice for teaching
and learning with open/community-source tools supported in part by
rSmart and the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
(See http://sakaiproject.org/innovation-awards for more information
and the full announcement text.)
Pieter Hartsook
Sakai Foundation Communications Manager
hartsook at sakaifoundation.com
-----------------------------------------
4. Oxford has Upgraded to 2.6.0
We are pleased to announce that on November 3 the University of Oxford
upgraded to 2.6.0.
Adam Marshall
adam.marshall at oucs.ox.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------
5. rSmart's Sakai CLE 2.6.2 Released
rSmart has announced the release of the second service pack for the
rSmart Sakai CLE 2.6. Enhancements include a completely redesigned
Site Statistics Tool version 2.0 with AJAX-based interface and
expanded reporting, newly added features to the Discussion Forums
tool, and numerous improvements to Portfolios, the Site Editor,
Installer tool, LDAP, and SIS properties. This service pack also
resolves 226 total issues, including 209 bug fixes and 17 enhancements.
To read the full story, click here: http://bit.ly/IvZoT
Megan Perrone
Marketing Representative
rSmart
megan.perrone at rsmart.com
-----------------------------------------
6. University of Amsterdam Conducts OSP Audit
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) has been a pioneer in using the Open
Source Portfolio (OSP) in Sakai for numerous educational purposes. On
October 26-28, 2009, UvA conducted an audit to 1) determine the
viability of continuing to use OSP, 2) gage the possibility of "quick
wins" for encouraging and sustaining OSP use, and 3) gather OSP
requirements for future use. The audit was commissioned by Léon
Raijmann and organized by Marij Veugelers (Veugelers at uva.nl) of the
UvA IT in Education Department. Janice Smith, Ph.D., of Three Canoes (http://threecanoes.com
), a professional services company focusing on open source
applications in education, facilitated the audit, meeting with seven
user groups (Medical Education, Social Geography, Science, Psychology,
Artificial Intelligence, Communication Science, Teacher Education) and
the UvA Sakai development and functional support teams. Preliminary
findings confirm that although the current use of OSP has declined due
to attention being diverted elsewhere, there is overt enthusiasm among
UvA user groups for adopting new OSP enhancements to support
competency-based education. UvA IT in Education leadership will use
the audit report to determine how to employ current OSP innovations to
their best advantage and consider how new innovations to be developed
by UvA could improve local use of OSP as well as contribute to the OSP
community.
Janice A. Smith, Ph.D.
2009 Sakai Foundation Fellow
Three Canoes
janice.smith at threecanoes.com
-----------------------------------------
7. Advanced Sakai Portfolio Training at Marist College
Marist College is hosting an advanced Sakai portfolio training on our
campus in Poughkeepsie, New York on December 10-11, 2009.
We have tried to keep costs low to just cover expenses: $750 per
attendee for the two days of training, including lunch and
refreshments. We have 10 attendees so far and are capping it at 20, so
it will be very intimate and focused experience. To register, please
email nate.angell at rsmart.com to reserve your spot and arrange payment
details.
The training will be led by Sean Keesler and Janice Smith of Three
Canoes, whose expertise is based on years of successfully implementing
portfolios in a variety of educational contexts. Sean and Janice offer
a functional and technical training package that has proven successful
in numerous venues, and attends to the individual needs and learning
styles of each participant.
The training follows a free, part-day general interest K-20 ePortfolio
Innovations event at Marist that will take place from 11am to 4pm,
December 9, 2009. We encourage training participants to attend the
Innovations event as an opportunity to meet portfolio practitioners
from other institutions and engage with portfolios from institutional
and functional perspectives. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmart.com/event/marist-colleges-innovations-eportfolios-transforming-k-20-educational-experience
Training Prerequisites
- A working understanding of XML, XSL and XSD.
- A computer with OxygenXML installed (the trial version is fine) or
another XML IDE of your choice. The instructors will be using OxygenXML.
- A Sakai instance to work on. A QA server, free Try Sakai account or
your own server would work. The instructors will be working with Sakai
2.6, but versions back as far as Sakai 2.4 should present no
significant issues.
Training Agenda
Spend two concentrated days acquiring understanding and expertise in
Sakai portfolio tools, data structures and how they work together to
enact portfolio experiences. The goal of this training is to promote
self-sufficiency in using Sakai portfolio tools for specific
institutional purposes.
Desired participant outcomes include:
- An overall understanding of how the Sakai portfolio tool suite can
be customized to accomplish a range of educational purposes.
- Enhanced expertise in the use of the XML stack to build portfolio
data structures.
- Success in creating portfolio forms using Form Builder, XML schema
in Oxygen, and custom form renderers.
- Step-by-step experience in building a portfolio template using a pre-
prepared generic design that can be extended to match specific
institutional needs.
- Integration of portfolio knowledge and skills into strategic
planning for specific institutional purposes.
- Significant process in developing a portfolio template tailored to
the needs of each participating institution.
Training Schedule
- 12/10 Morning: Functional and technical overview of the portfolio
tool suite; planning your portfolio implementation.
- 12/10 Afternoon: Updating your expertise in using XML and Oxygen;
creating forms with Form Builder and as XML schema in Oxygen.
- 12/11 Morning: Building a portfolio template using Oxygen and a pre-
prepared template design that can be modified to meet your
institutional needs.
- 12/11 Afternoon: Integrating portfolio knowledge and skills to build
a portfolio template for your institution.
Joshua Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Marist College
josh.baron at marist.edu
-----------------------------------------
8. Are You Using or Planning to Use Profile2?
Hi everyone,
As you may be aware, a number of new tools and services are being
considered by the Sakai Product Council for inclusion in Sakai 2.7: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org//x/j4LgAw
Profile2 is one of these new tools: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org//x/DYA7AQ
Over the past few months I've heard from a number of institutions
trialling, interested in, or maybe even in production with Profile2,
but just wanted to get a new show of hands of who is using Profile2 so
I can work with you in your rollout and through any issues you might
have. So, who's using it?
Cheers,
Steve Swinsburg
steve.swinsburg at gmail.com
-----------------------------------------
9. UNC Sakai Pilot Evaluation -- Final Report and Results Summary
Slides
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has conducted a pilot
to evaluate the efficacy of Sakai for teaching, research, outreach,
and administrative purposes. Both the 74-page Final Report (http://www.unc.edu/sakaipilot/blog/?p=54
) and a 15-slide visual summary (http://www.unc.edu/sakaipilot/blog/?p=57
) are available.
Pieter Hartsook
hartsook at sakaifoundation.org
-----------------------------------------
10. EDUCAUSE Research -- Dynamics of Supporting Sakai Through Local
and Global Collaboration
This EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) bulletin discusses
the adjustments that the Indiana University information technology
organization made, and continues to make, in order to support
membership in Sakai. It has been said that supporting Sakai can seem
like trying to change a tire on a moving car. As co-founder of and
active participant in the Sakai collaboration, the effects of IU's
decision -- the unexpected, the challenging, and the delightful -- are
discussed in terms of the intra- and interuniversity realities of
highly collaborative efforts.
The report is available in pdf format at:
http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/DynamicsofSupportingSakaiThrou/162979
-----------------------------------------
11. rSmart's Sakai and Support Solution Chosen by Johns Hopkins, UC
Davis, and Others
rSmart recently announced impressive growth for its rSmart Sakai
Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software and support
services. Fourteen new academic institutions, including Johns Hopkins
University, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and University of the Pacific, as
well as the open source Kuali Foundation, have implemented the rSmart
solution this year. The rSmart Sakai (CLE) is the company's enterprise-
ready and supported version of the open source Sakai software that
includes a unique capability to support teaching and learning, project
collaboration, group interaction, and ePortfolios across the academic
enterprise, all from a single platform.
To read the full story, click here: http://www.rsmart.com/news/rsmart?s-sakai-cle-support-solution-chosen-johns-hopkins-university-uc-davis-and-other-leading-educational-institutions
Megan Perrone
Marketing Representative
rSmart
megan.perrone at rsmart.com
-----------------------------------------
12. rSmart Job Openings -- Software Support Engineer and Sakai
Solutions Consultant
Job: Software Support Engineer
http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=776445
Phoenix, Arizona Area
We are looking for an energetic and motivated Software Support
Engineer to join our team working on Kuali, an open-source, web-based
financial system used by colleges and universities around the country.
---------
Job: Sakai Solutions Consultant
http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=779042
Northeastern U.S.
We are looking for a highly knowledgeable and capable sales leader
with a proven track record of selling high-value complex solutions to
colleges and universities.
-----------------------------------------
13. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] Sakai 2.5.6 / 2.6.2 maintenance releases
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Sakai-2-5-6-2-6-2-maintenance-releases-td3981715.html#a3981715
[Building Sakai] Recommanded OS X dev setup...
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Recommanded-OS-X-dev-setup-td3981148.html#a3981148
[Building Sakai] Transaction problem when copying site
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Transaction-problem-when-copying-site-td3985378.html#a3985378
[Building Sakai] Trunk: ui package proposal
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Trunk-ui-package-proposal-td3961042.html#a3961929
[Building Sakai] Search tool: memory problem in rebuilding indexes.
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Search-tool-memory-problem-in-rebuilding-indexes-td3985441.html#a3985441
[Building Sakai] moved/removed javacode 2.5 - 2.6
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-moved-removed-javacode-2-5-2-6-td3959004.html#a3972086
[Building Sakai] Export calendar events to iCal format
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Rwiki-and-IE8-td3993272.html#a3993715
[Building Sakai] sakai, webdav, and Windows 7
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-sakai-webdav-and-Windows-7-td3995963.html#a3996814
[Building Sakai] maven v2.2.1
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-maven-v2-2-1-td3997406.html#a3997406
[Building Sakai] Portals and transactions
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Portals-and-transactions-td3987046.html#a3987046
[Building Sakai] A question about how to use some APIs in project
Profile2
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-A-question-about-how-to-use-some-APIs-in-project-Profile2-td3952620.html#a3952620
[Building Sakai] Oracle database for sakai
http://n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Are-you-using-planning-to-use-Profile2-If-so-let-me-know-td3998392.html#a4000265
[Portfolio] [DG: Teaching & Learning] Link to Google Doc for teaching
needs
http://n2.nabble.com/Re-Portfolio-DG-Teaching-Learning-Link-to-Google-Doc-for-teaching-needs-td3974134.html#a3977595
[Portfolio] IU Matrix enhancements finally merged to trunk!
http://n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-IU-Matrix-enhancements-finally-merged-to-trunk-td3974903.html#a3974903
[Using Sakai] Site Stats issue
http://n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-Site-Stats-issue-td3998820.html#a3998820
[Using Sakai] Email notification in assignment after grading
http://n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-Email-notification-in-assignment-after-grading-td3985104.html#a3985104
[Portfolio] Call for award committee members
http://n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-Call-for-award-committee-members-td3995280.html#a3995280
[DG: Teaching & Learning] [WG: Accessibility] [Management] Fwd: Sakai
3 Capabilities and Accessibility
http://n2.nabble.com/Re-WG-Accessibility-Management-Fwd-Sakai-3-Capabilities-and-Accessibility-td3953596.html#a3955539
[DG: User Experience] [DG: Teaching & Learning] User Goals
http://n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-User-Goals-td3944287.html#a3944287
[DG: User Experience] 3akai UX developers virtual meeting
http://n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-3akai-UX-developers-virtual-meeting-td3955413.html#a3955413
[DG: User Experience] Refactor 3akai site membership role creation
http://n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-Refactor-3akai-site-membership-role-creation-td3959726.html#a3959726
[DG: User Experience] Pending groups-and-role 3akai tasks
http://n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-Pending-groups-and-role-3akai-tasks-td3954648.html#a3954648
-----------------------------------------
14. Events
III Reunión de usuarios de Sakai en España
19 - 20 de noviembre, 2010
Universidad Pública de Navarra
http://www.fundacion.unavarra.es/sakai/
Online Educa Berlin 2009
December 2-4, 2009
Hotel InterContinental Berlin
Berlin, Germany
http://www.online-educa.com/the-conference
Jasig 2010 Ten Years of Open Source Innovation
March 8-10, 2009
The Town and Country Resort
San Diego, California
http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/10spring/index.html
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