[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter August 19, 2010
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Mon Aug 23 08:53:05 PDT 2010
Sakai Newsletter
August 19, 2010
1. From the Executive Director
2. The Sir Louie Project
3. Google Summer of Code 2010
4. Sakai Teaching and Learning Community Initiatives
5. Longsight Announces Partnership with BigBlueButton
6. Update from Sakai 2 Technical Coordination Committee
7. Indiana University Job Opening: Chief Process Experience Architect
8. Recent Email Group Discussions
9. Events
-------------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Ian Dolphin, the new Executive
Director of the Sakai Foundation. Many of you know me from my time on
the Board of the Sakai Project, during the period of Mellon grant
funding and early years of the Foundation. For those who don't know
me, I'll tell you a little about my background. I began my career as
a teacher, but have worked in educational and administrative software
for the last twenty years, first facilitating content creation with
groups of teachers, and latterly as Head of eStrategy at the
University of Hull. During that time I managed a considerable range of
grant-funded projects, from either UK or European Union funding
sources. For the last three years I've been seconded from that post to
the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a part of the UK
education funding council structure which provides a series of ICT
related services for UK Higher and Further Education. At the JISC my
roles included a period as a Programme Director, and, for the last two
years, International Director of an initiative involving the JISC and
several agencies in New Zealand and Australia. In addition to my time
on the Sakai Board, I have also served on the Board of JASIG, the
parent organisation for uPortal, and the Curriki content initiative.
Returning to the Sakai Community after two years, it's difficult to
miss the changes. The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment is
both a more mature, and more widely adopted platform than ever before.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those -- software developers and
others -- who have improved the environment so much, and who have
helped broaden the adoption base. The growth of the teaching and
learning community around Sakai is tremendous. Listening to the
Teaching and Learning Award winners at the recent Denver conference
was a powerful reminder of why this community does what it does;
innovate for the benefit of learners and educators.
It's also very noticeable, whether one attends Sakai Conferences, or
participates on mailing lists and other community endeavours, how much
of a global community Sakai has become. I was pleased to participate
in the Sakai 3 Project meetings in Denver. Around the table were
participants from the US, UK, Australia and South Africa. Sakai 3 is
international from the outset.
My priorities in my first weeks and months with the Foundation are to
understand and review the processes which ensure the health and
sustainability of Sakai. I'll be working closely with Alan Marks, the
newly appointed Director of the Sakai 3 Project, to ensure that
project gets off to flying start. More critically still, I'll be
finding ways to reach out to the institutions and individuals which
make up the Sakai Community, and understand your strategic priorities
and goals, so that the Foundation can serve you better. Those
conversations are an essential -- if not the essential -- component of
renewing and refreshing Foundation strategy.
It would be wrong to let the opportunity pass to thank the individuals
who have occupied this position before me. Chuck Severance, the first
Executive Director of the Foundation, who faced the difficult task of
transitioning from funded project to community. Michael Korcuska, who
shepherded the Foundation through its early years, and Lois Brooks, a
Sakai Founder who stepped at short notice in the period following
Michael's departure. I owe a particular debt to Lois for her help in
transitioning to my tenure. It is an honour to succeed them.
My intention as Executive Director is to be as transparent and open as
possible. I'm iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org -- please feel free to
drop me a line. Over the next few months I'll be visiting as many
Sakai schools as I can -- and some which aren't users of our software,
I hope. You can follow my progress on Twitter (I'm iandolphin24), or
my soon-to-be-established blog. I look forward to working with you all.
Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
-------------------------------------------
2. The Sir Louie Project
Sir Louie -- System for Integrating Reading Lists within the Oxford
University Information Environment
This project will enhance two academic and administrative systems, the
WebLearn (VLE), (based on the Sakai open source platform) and the
University's library search interface SOLO, (based on Ex-libris Primo)
in order to provide much improved experience for both students and
lecturers in the area of reading lists.
The planned improvements target the searching of library catalogues
and the displaying of availability information with a reading list.
Development work on both systems will enable the SOLO search interface
to be invoked from within WebLearn's reading list tool, (also known as
the Citations Helper,) and be used to find items to be sent back to
the VLE for automatic inclusion in the reading list. The data will be
transferred using the standard OpenURL encoding.
In addition, the project will develop a method of augmenting all
reading lists with availability information when they are displayed in
WebLearn.
This is achieved by "hiding" OpenURL COinS meta data for each item
within a reading list. This in-page data can then be used to determine
current availability once the page has loaded (using DLF ILS-DI and /
or DAIA).
The result is that the reading list will automatically contain links
to "full text" versions of journal articles, a list of (Oxford
University) libraries where the item can be found, and links to online
stores where the item can be purchased.
The COiNS meta data can also be used to enable existing Open Source
software such as Zotero and LibX (a browser plug-in) to interact with
Citation Helper reading lists.
This kind of integration between Oxford's VLE and Library systems was
formally requested of the University by the Oxford University
Student's Union (OUSU) in order that students can save valuable time
when dealing with their reading lists.
The project has been funded by JISC within their Flexible Services
Delivery programme and runs until the end of 2010.
For more information, see:
https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/asuc/oucs/sirlouie
Adam Marshall
adam.marshall at oucs.ox.ac.uk
-------------------------------------------
3. Google Summer of Code 2010
Google Summer of Code 2010 (GSoC) is drawing to a close and Sakai's
three students all have exciting contributions to share. It's
particularly great to see that all three are planning to keep up their
involvement with Sakai. Many thanks to Google for running another
great GSoC, to our volunteer mentors, and to everyone in the community
who has helped out.
Manoj Inukolunu, now final-year CS student at BITS-Pilani in Goa, has
built a citation manager widget [1] [2] [3], helped by some joint
mentoring from Cambridge. He writes "It has been a wonderful
experience to work the Sakai Foundation [...] GSoC has been the single
greatest experience in my life so far and the most productive summer
so far. The interaction with the community (thanks very much for all
the guys who helped me ) was the best part."
[1]
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/3AK/Citation+Manager+widget+specification+proposal
[2] http://github.com/zerocool1989/citation-manager-widget
[3] http://github.com/zerocool1989/exportRIS
Maria Teresa Gimenez Fayos, final-year CS student, has been developing
an Android app [4] [5] for interacting with Sakai 2.x instances,
working with mentor David Roldan Martinez at the Polytechnic
University of Valencia. She writes of her project "Of course I am
planning to continue working on it! In fact this is going to be my
final career project. I am going to use all what I learned about
Android and Sakai in this project."
[4] Code: http://bitbucket.org/mrs.hopper/nellodee
[5] Maria's blog (in Spanish) about "Sakai, Android, technology and so
on": http://www.colorines.org/
Ashish Mittal, now a 3rd-year CS student at Sardar Patel Institute Of
Technology, has developed an 'event explorer tool' [6] for help desk
users with mentor Ian Boston at Cambridge. Ashish writes, "It has
been a great experience to work under Sakai for GSOC 2010. It is
mainly because of the opportunity of working with great experienced
people, having a great mentor, working with the most cutting edge
technologies for the project and developing a great and successful
project at the end. I am very happy I got selected under Sakai
Foundation for GSOC and will cherish this period of my introduction to
Sakai Community. People at Sakai are great and very helpful and have
been available through IRC or mailing lists whenever any help was
needed. This has been the greatest event for me till now and I thank
Sakai community for this."
[6] - http://github.com/ashishmittal/eventexplorer (accessible in the
sandbox area under the name eventexplorer)
You can read the full updates from all three students on the Sakai
GSoC blog: http://sakaigsoc2010.blogspot.com/
Amyas Phillips
amyas at caret.cam.ac.uk
-------------------------------------------
4. Sakai Teaching and Learning Community Initiatives
Following work at the 2010 Sakai Conference in Denver, the Sakai
Teaching and Learning (T&L) group has identified priority initiatives
for the upcoming year. During the year leading up to the 2011 Sakai
Conference in Berlin, the T&L group will focus on the following four
areas:
- Continuing leadership of the Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award
- Continuing advancement of the learning capabilities design lenses
- Sharing best practices and resources for the use of Sakai for
distance learning
- Increasing student engagement in the Sakai community
- Structurally, the T&L group has formed an initiative group for each
of these categories that will meet on a regular basis. The full T&L
group will hold a call together each month to share progress across
the initiatives. (Please see minutes from the August 2010 call.)
Each quarter, the T&L group will also host a virtual community
gathering to share the work that has been accomplished on these
initiatives and to create opportunities for discussion, feedback and
additional input.
Please mark Thursday, September 9 at 5:00pm EST on your calendar for
the first T&L community gathering.
The T&L group page in Confluence has been updated with information
about the initiatives.
The T&L group has created a calendar in Confluence that includes all
group meeting dates.
All initiative groups are seeking broader engagement from across the
Sakai community.
If you would like to participate in or monitor the work of an
initiative group, there is a Confluence page, a mail list, and a
regular tele-conference for each group. The Confluence page for the
T&L group includes links to all of the initiatives, and is a great
place start in gaining information about all T&L group activities.
Please consider identifying at least one individual on your campus to
participate in the T&L group. It is a very welcoming group that is
doing important work not only sharing best practices in teaching and
learning, but also in helping to define the future direction of Sakai.
Kim Thanos
kthanos at sakaifoundation.org
-------------------------------------------
5. Longsight Announces Partnership with BigBlueButton
The Longsight Group announced a new partnership with Blindside
Networks, developers of BigBlueButton (http://bigbluebutton.org), the
open source web conferencing system expressly designed for education.
Through this partnership, Longsight is providing to their Sakai
clients full support for BigBlueButton's integrated synchronous
collaboration that includes live presentations with a whiteboard,
desktop sharing, web-cam displays and audio using either voice over IP
(VoIP) or telephone-based services.
Longsight hosts and supports BigBlueButton with Blindside Networks
(http://blindsidenetworks.com), providing monitoring and expert
support services to ensure reliability.
"We're currently hosting BigBlueButton for fourteen colleges in the
U.S. who are discovering how productive this suite of synchronous
tools can be in support of teaching and learning," reports Scott
Siddall, Partner at The Longsight Group. "BigBlueButton has exploded
onto the scene following the Sakai Conference in mid-June and
Blackboard's recent announcement of their move into this market. We
are thrilled to be providing our clients with truly open source web
conferencing services," added Siddall. BigBlueButton is fully
integrated into Sakai thanks to the Sakai community members Adrian
Fish and Nuno Fernandes -- another example of the power of community
source applications.
Blindside Network's CEO, Fred Dixon said, "Working with a global
community of developers, we developed BigBlueButton to enable
universities and colleges to offer a high-quality learning experience
to remote students." Dixon added, "Longsight has a track-record of
providing first-class support to their customers. We are pleased to
partner closely with Longsight to ensure their customers can fully
leverage BigBlueButton."
About Longsight
Longsight is a leading provider of hosting and support services for
open source software. The company delivers exceptionally reliable
hosting services and high quality, comprehensive support for Sakai
(learning management), Drupal (portals and content management) and
DSpace (institutional repositories). Longsight enjoys a national
reputation for understanding the business of education based on
decades of experience in higher education IT management. For more
information, please visit http://www.longsight.com.
About Blindside Networks
Blindside Networks, located in Ottawa, Canada, is dedicated to helping
universities, colleges, and private sector educational institutions
offer a high-quality learning experience to remote students. We
created and provide commercial support for BigBlueButton, an open
source web conferencing system for distance education. For more
information, please visit http://blindsidenetworks.com/.
About BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is an open source system for synchronous education. It
provides teachers and students integrated sharing of slides, video,
audio, chat, whiteboard and desktops. It's built using over fifteen
open source components, runs on Macintosh, Unix, and PC computers, and
is backed by a commercial and open source community that cares about
good design and a streamlined user experience. For more information,
please visit http://bigbluebutton.org/.
Scott Siddall
siddall at longsight.com
-------------------------------------------
6. Update from Sakai 2 Technical Coordination Committee
Hello,
This is an update for the community on the activities of the Sakai 2
Technical Coordination Committee.
As a reminder, the TCC conducts its business via a public mailing
list, sakai2-tcc at collab.sakaiproject.org.
Confluence space --
The TCC now has a space in Confluence:
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/TCC/Home
You can find a list of TCC members, a copy of the formation
announcement, and our newly approved governance document.
TCC Governance and Leadership --
On 4 August 2010, the TCC adopted its governance structure.
The group will use a rotating chair/vice-chair model -- patterned
after the Maintenance Team -- for leadership, and will consist of
active and emeritus (inactive) members.
Elections for chair and vice-chair were held on 6-7 August 2010. Seth
Theriault was elected chair and Megan May was elected vice-chair.
2.6.3/2.7.1 releases --
These releases are imminent and testing is ongoing. If you can help
test, please send mail to sakai-qa at collab.sakaiproject.org.
In addition, a new version of search (post-2.6) is under review and
testing for inclusion in 2.6.3.
The final decisions to release 2.6.3 and 2.7.1 will be subject to a
positive TCC vote.
2.8 --
The TCC looking at a mid-September 2010 code freeze for this release.
A strawman proposal for the 2.8 release is under review and discussion:
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/8RkhB
This document also has been circulated to the QA/RM lists. Please add
any feedback as a comment on the Confluence page. Additional technical
work is ongoing.
Seth Theriault
slt at columbia.edu
-------------------------------------------
7. Indiana University Job Opening: Chief Process Experience Architect
Chief Process Experience Architect - PA5IT
Description and Responsibilities:
Serves as the chief process architect to enhance the user experience
and process efficiency of IT for Indiana University campuses. The
position will lead a team that uses empirical, anthropological, and
other evidence-based approaches to understand the human elements of
system use and potential for improving process effectiveness.
Initially, work will be targeted towards student systems to ensure
that development adequately addresses students' needs; future efforts
will focus on additional information systems and will use research and
analysis to enhance human/computer interaction through the design and
development of subsequent systems. In order to accomplish these goals
successfully, individual must be able to assess the objectives of a
high-level, diverse audience and use various forms of communication at
both an executive and technical level to advise accordingly. Must be
able to effectively document and communicate insights to an
experienced development team. Ultimately, this position will be
responsible for the successful creation, modification, and
implementation of the interface to Indiana University's most utilized
information systems.
Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree and five years demonstrated leadership in
human/computer interaction initiatives and projects with emphasis on
process re-engineering required. Excellent interpersonal, written, and
oral communication skills essential. Track record in successfully
leading high-level process redesign on large-scale projects required.
Demonstrated ability to successfully interact with and guide
high-level executives from different organizations towards desired
outcomes required. Master's in Information Systems or Human/Computer
Interaction preferred. Experience within higher education highly
desirable.
If interested, you must apply online at https://jobs.iu.edu/ Refer to
job number #2073.
Indiana University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment institution.
Lynda Johnson
Senior Human Resources Associate
ljohnso6 at iupui.edu
http://www.indiana.edu/~uitshr/
-------------------------------------------
8. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] [sakai2-tcc] Remove axis2 for 2.8
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/sakai2-tcc-Remove-axis2-for-2-8-td5434381.html#a5434381
[Building Sakai] Problem with deleting old assignment after conversion
to 2.7.x
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Problem-with-deleting-old-assignment-after-conversion-to-2-7-x-td5436988.html#a5437272
[Building Sakai] Site Alias - multiples
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Site-Alias-multiples-td5436478.html#a5436478
[Building Sakai] Sakai CAS password change authentication issue
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Sakai-CAS-password-change-authentication-issue-td5436481.html#a5436481
[Building Sakai] Changing Site Alias
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Changing-Site-Alias-td5436440.html#a5436440
[Building Sakai] gradebook2 build
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-gradebook2-build-td5423964.html#a5423964
[Building Sakai] Profile2 SQL problem
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Profile2-SQL-problem-td5436367.html#a5436367
[Building Sakai] assignments 2 question
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-assignments-2-question-td5435719.html#a5435719
[Building Sakai] SQL Duplicate entry with Melete and Profile2
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-SQL-Duplicate-entry-with-Melete-and-Profile2-td5435433.html#a5443489
[Building Sakai] MathJax to replace jsMath in rWiki?
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-MathJax-to-replace-jsMath-in-rWiki-td5433780.html#a5433780
[Building Sakai] Message service cache?
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Message-service-cache-td5432455.html#a5432455
[Building Sakai] Adding students from previous semesters
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Adding-students-from-previous-semesters-td5430972.html#a5430972
[Building Sakai] Full Source Check out of Sakai 2.x
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Full-Source-Check-out-of-Sakai-2-x-td5428233.html#a5430879
[DG: User Experience] PD Blog: Sakai 3 Project Plan
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Fwd-PD-Blog-Sakai-3-Project-Plan-td5438839.html#a5438839
[Building Sakai] Full Source Check out of Sakai 2.x
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Full-Source-Check-out-of-Sakai-2-x-td5428233.html#a5430879
[Building Sakai] Opensocial integration with Sakai
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Opensocial-integration-with-Sakai-td5426996.html#a5426996
[Portfolio] portfolio Digest, Vol 18, Issue 6
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Re-Portfolio-portfolio-Digest-Vol-18-Issue-6-td5425782.html#a5425782
[Portfolio] portfolio Digest, Vol 18, Issue 5
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Re-Portfolio-portfolio-Digest-Vol-18-Issue-5-td5423895.html#a5423895
[Portfolio] Decorated URL's for attached portfolio files (SAK-16203)
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-Decorated-URL-s-for-attached-portfolio-files-SAK-16203-td5349028.html#a5349251
[DG: User Experience] How to tell which version of the UI is packaged
with Nakamura
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-How-to-tell-which-version-of-the-UI-is-packaged-with-Nakamura-td5429540.html#a5429540
[DG: User Experience] Personal vision statement for Content and Resources
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-Personal-vision-statement-for-Content-and-Resources-td5361189.html#a5361189
[Using Sakai] Bug Report: back button on browser
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-Bug-Report-back-button-on-browser-td5433650.html#a5433650
[Using Sakai] Tomcat can't start after svn update for 2.6.x:
SearchService problem?
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-Tomcat-can-t-start-after-svn-update-for-2-6-x-SearchService-problem-td5432022.html#a5432117
[Using Sakai] Update from Sakai 2 Technical Coordination Committee
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Update-from-Sakai-2-Technical-Coordination-Committee-td5390123.html#a5390123
-------------------------------------------
9. Events
2010 AuSakai Conference
Wednesday - Friday, September 15 - 17, 2011
Pre-conference session Wednesday, September 15
North Sydney College, Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE
www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/AuSakai2010
Sakai 2011 Conference
June 14 - 16, 2011
Ramada Hotel Berlin -- Alexanderplatz
Berlin, Germany
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Sakai.Newsletter.August.19.2010.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 162230 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/announcements/attachments/20100823/f2d52ae2/attachment-0001.pdf
More information about the announcements
mailing list