[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter April 29, 2010
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Fri May 7 08:57:14 PDT 2010
Sakai Newsletter
April 29, 2010
1. From the Executive Director
2. Denver Conference Updates
3. Welcome to Sakai -- Umeå University
4. American Public University System Selects Sakai LMS
5. 10th Annual Cyber Teachers' Institute -- Registration is Open!
6. The 2nd Annual Etudes Users' Summit is a week away!
7. 2010 AuSakai Conference
8. Mix and Match Sakai 2 and Sakai 3 Tools
9. SMS 0.16 Released
10. Congratulations to Our Successful GSoC Applicants this Year
11. Job Opening: Developer at Whitman College
12. Recent Email Group Discussions
13. Events
--------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
The first release candidate for Sakai version 2.7 (sakai-2.7.0-rc01)
is scheduled for May 9. Development and testing of the Sakai software
are done by the Sakai community, and about 50 people have contributed
to this release. The contributions have come from universities,
commercial partners and individuals. It's truly an international
operation with participation from North America, Europe, Africa and
Asia. Even with all this contributed effort, there is still a lot of
validation to be done on the updates in 2.7 before the final release
can be done. The team needs a few more hands on QA to test new
features and patches. If you are planning to run 2.7 in production,
helping with QA now is time well spent, so please do consider getting
involved. The Confluence page for the release has up to date
information.
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/QA/2.7.0+Changes
We've had a few changes in the Sakai Foundation staff in the past few
weeks. Pieter Hartsook has left the Sakai Foundation after serving
since June 2009 as the Communications Manager. Following the model in
place for several of the other Sakai staff who have dual roles at
their home institutions and the Sakai Foundation, two community
members are joining the team in a part time capacity. Sean Keesler of
Three Canoes will be the Sakai webmaster, and Kim Thanos of Thanos
Partners is taking over public relations work. Kim and Sean are long
time, active members of the Sakai community, and it's a benefit to us
all to have them each take on Sakai Foundation work in addition to
their other efforts.
Lois Brooks
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
lbrooks at sakaifoundation.org
--------------------------------------
2. Denver Sakai Conference Updates
Early Registration is Open!
Registration is open for the 10th Sakai conference. The conference
provides four days of learning, collaboration and interaction across
our community of designers, developers, pedagogists, faculty and
students. Program and registration details can be found at
http://sakaiproject.org/static/conference-2010.htm
We're pleased to announce two featured events:
- Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the
Coming Transformation of Higher Education, (Chelsea Green, 2010), will
keynote the conference. Anya will share her insights on how technology
is disrupting the academy, and how our institutions must evolve to
meet the challenges of the next century.
- The winners of the Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award will
inspire us with their successful pedagogical innovations. The award
honors best practices in teaching and learning in a Sakai environment.
Presentations by the award winners provide important insight into what
we are doing well as a community, and stretch our thinking about what
is possible.
Please share the invitation to participate with others. We
collectively benefit when diverse experiences and perspectives come
together at the Sakai conference.
Be sure to register by May 21 to receive hotel and conference discount rates..
10th Sakai Conference
Hyatt Technology Center, Denver, Colorado, USA
June 14-17, 2010
http://sakaiproject.org/static/conference-2010.htm
Lois Brooks
lbrooks at sakaifoundation.org
------
Group Discount
If your institution is sending 5 or more people to the conference,
they qualify for a $25 per person discount. Contact Mary Miles prior
to registration so that a discount code can be set up to take
advantage of this discount.
Mary Miles
mmiles at umich.edu
------
Visa Invitations
If you need a letter of invitation for Visa purposes, please contact
Mary Miles as soon as possible.
Thanks.
Mary Miles
mmiles at umich.edu
--------------------------------------
3. Welcome to Sakai -- Umeå University
Sakai Welcomes new member Umeå University. Umeå U. was founded in 1965
and is Sweden's fifth oldest university. Today, we have a strong
international and multicultural presence with students, teachers and
researchers from all over the world. Our main campus -- with its
29,000 students and 4,000 employees -- is alive with enthusiasm,
creativity and fresh ideas.
--------------------------------------
4. American Public University System Selects Sakai's Learning
Management System
American Public University System (APUS) has announced that it has
chosen Sakai as the foundation for its new Learning Management System
(LMS).
"Our students deserve and expect high quality learning outcomes at a
very reasonable cost," says Wallace E. Boston, President and Chief
Executive Officer. "The new APUS Learning Management System will allow
us to continually improve and enrich the already high-quality
educational experience our students and faculty enjoy by providing the
open source alternatives and resources offered by Sakai's
collaborative community."
In selecting Sakai, APUS has committed to assisting the open source
community in the shared goal of creating a robust learning environment
that combines technology, content, and services to meet the evolving
needs of higher education. Close collaboration with the other
institutions using Sakai will influence the future development and
direction of next-generation higher education technology.
In addition to adopting Sakai software for its faculty and students,
APUS has become a member of the Sakai Foundation. The Sakai Foundation
is supported by voluntary partner contributions. Sakai Foundations
member organizations elect the ten-member Board of Directors, which
provide the strategic leadership for the Sakai Foundation.
--------------------------------------
5. 10th Annual Cyber Teachers' Institute - Registration is Open!
You are invited to participate in the 10th Annual Cyber Teachers'
Institute (CTI)!
CTI has served as a meeting place for great teachers to learn,
unlearn, and relearn how to make effective use of web-based
technologies to support online teaching, learning, and collaboration.
The engaging dialogue on teaching principles and best strategies is
the highlight of CTI.
CTI is offered entirely online in an asynchronous format, delivered
through the Etudes course management system. It consists of the
following professional development courses:
- CTI 100: You CAN Teach Online
- CTI 101: CLASSIC Cyber Teachers' Institute
- CTI 102: ADVANCED Cyber Teachers' Institute
Registration is now open! The courses are offered in June, July and August.
Learn more and register here: http://etudes.org/training-schedule-cti.htm
Each course is scheduled for three weeks. Many participants take all
three courses and enjoy moving through the experience together, as a
community. As per ex-participants, CTI is most valuable, rewarding,
engaging, and fun.
"I laughed, I cried, I had a good time and I learned something new
every day," wrote English professor Suzanne Floyd from West Los
Angeles College in her evaluation of CTI.
"The courses challenged me to question my old habits more intensely
than I have done in the past. I have experienced an exponential growth
in those things I need to teach (and learn) in the future." - Russ
"I am going on my third year of teaching so I am considered new to
academia. However, I have learned more in these short weeks than my 3
years of teaching." - Mark
For more information, see: http://etudes.org/cti/
We hope to "see" many of you online in CTI this summer!
Vivie Sinou
Executive Director, Etudes, Inc.
http://etudes.org/
--------------------------------------
6. The 2nd Annual Etudes Users' Summit is a Week Away!
Join us at the 2nd Annual Etudes Users' Summit, at the Crowne Plaza
SFO, California, on May 13 and 14, 2010. The Summit agenda is filled
with presentations on best practices in the use of Sakai and Etudes,
show & tell sessions, and updates on new tools and features for Etudes.
If you are interested in learning about new features and enhancements
underway in Etudes tools (Melete, Jforum, and Mneme) and new tools
under development, don't miss this event. The Etudes team will provide
an overview of two new tools: a) "Course Map" - designed to allow
instructors to guide students through the learning process and give
them a single structure to help them navigate through everything they
must do in the class, and b) "Activity Meter" - designed to monitor
student activity and provide instructors with early alert mechanisms
to intervene.
Dr. Ed Gould, President from Imperial Valley College, will kick off
the Summit, on Thursday, May 13, 2010 with the keynote address:
"Technology and Accountability: The Catalyst for Radical Change in
Higher Education."
See agenda: http://etudes.org/summit/summit-agenda.htm
For more information and to register, visit the Summit website:
http://etudes.org/summit/
We hope to see you there!
Vivie Sinou
Executive Director, Etudes, Inc.
http://etudes.org
https://myetudes.org
--------------------------------------
7. 2010 AuSakai Conference
AuSakai, the annual Australasian conference, is being held in Sydney,
Australia and hosted by TAFE NSW - Northern Sydney Institute from 15
to 17 September, 2010.
Information on the conference theme of e3 engage, educate, evolve and
other important information can be found on the conference website:
www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/AuSakai2010
- Conference Dates are Wednesday, 15th - Friday, 17th September
- Pre-conference technical workshop will be held on Wednesday, 15th September
- Location: North Sydney College, Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE,
located in northern metropolitan Sydney, Australia
Bookmark www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/AuSakai2010 for upcoming information
on registration, call for proposals, workshops and conference
activities.
For all enquiries, please send email to audrey.mcclue at tafensw.edu.au
Audrey McClue
Project Officer, Knowledge and Information Services Unit
http://www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/
audrey.mcclue at tafensw.edu.au
--------------------------------------
8. Mix and Match Sakai 2 and Sakai 3 Tools
I am very pleased to be able to share an important update with the
Sakai community regarding the ongoing efforts to create a flexible
migration path from Sakai 2 to Sakai 3. I have been blogging recently
about the development of a new Basic LTI widget for Sakai 3. This
effort builds on the existing capabilities of Sakai 3 which allow you
to expose entire Sakai 2 sites within the Sakai 3 portal (i.e., with
the addition of Sakai 3's social networking features).
The next step in this hybrid evolution adds the capability to expose
individual Sakai 2 tools within Sakai 3 sites. Furthermore, since we
were developing this new capability as a Sakai 3 widget, this means
that an end user could place multiple Sakai 2 tools onto a single
Sakai 3 page (i.e., something not currently possible in Sakai 2). This
may sound like a subtle distinction, but as you will see in the video
on this webpage (http://bit.ly/sakai32), it is an important
distinction as it helps to break Sakai 2 tools out of their silos.
Instructors can now author pages with custom workflows that may
include both Sakai 2 tools and Sakai 3 widgets!
Lance Speelmon
Scholarly Technologist
lance at indiana.edu
--------------------------------------
9. SMS 0.16 Released
University of Capetown is proud to announce the release of SMS-0.16.
This is a bug fix
release that addresses 21 issues that can be seen here:
http://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SMS/fixforversion/11844
The site for the release is available here:
http://source.cet.uct.ac.za/release/sms/sms-0.16/
Regards,
David Horwitz
david.horwitz at uct.ac.za
--------------------------------------
10. Congratulations to Our Successful Google Summer of Code
Applicants this Year
Ashish Mittal, 2nd year engineering student at Sardar Patel Institute
Of Technology, India, is going to be working with mentor Ian Boston on
an "event explorer" tool in 3akai for helpdesk staff.
Cyrille Mortier, just finishing a Master's degree in computer science
at the University of Savoy, will be working on the OpenSyllabus
project with mentor Claude Coulombe.
Maria Teresa Gimenez Fayos, final year computer science student at the
Polytechnic University of Valencia, proposed a project to develop a
Sakai Android application, mentored by David Roldan Martinez.
The students will be discussing things in #sakai
(http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23sakai), in our Google Group
(http://groups.google.com/group/sakai-gsoc10), and this year they'll
be keeping a GSoC blog (http://sakaigsoc2010.blogspot.com/). Look out
for them on the lists too!
Amyas Phillips
amyas at caret.cam.ac.uk
--------------------------------------
11. Job Opening: Developer at Whitman College
Whitman College is seeking a Developer in its Enterprise Technology
group, which manages, among other things, the College's Sakai instance
and Datatel ERP.
We will begin reviewing applications on May 17, with a July 1 start
date. Application details are available at:
http://www.whitman.edu/content/hr/employment_ops.
Thank you,
Mike Osterman
ostermmg.sakai at gmail.com
--------------------------------------
12. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] Gradebook question - Sakai-graded tests and relative weights
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Re-Using-Sakai-Building-Sakai-Gradebook-question-Sakai-graded-tests-and-relative-weights-td5009620.html#a5009620
[Building Sakai] Displaying number of units in a course
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Displaying-number-of-units-in-a-course-td5006440.html#a5006440
[Using Sakai] Sakai Hardware/software Requirements
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Displaying-number-of-units-in-a-course-td5006440.html#a5006440
[Building Sakai] When do scores from Assignments enter Gradebook
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-When-do-scores-from-Assignments-enter-Gradebook-td5004437.html#a5004437
[Building Sakai] Gradebook bug reports after MySQL upgrade
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/template/NodeServlet.jtp?tpl=search-page&node=1343168&query=Upgrading+to+Sakai+2.7&days=0
[Building Sakai] One instance of Tomcat, 2 Sakai servers
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-One-instance-of-Tomcat-2-Sakai-servers-td4998053.html#a4998053
[Building Sakai] Sakai 2.6.2 Problem with auto.ddl
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/template/NodeServlet.jtp?tpl=search-page&node=1343168&query=Sakai+2.6.2+Problem+with+auto.ddl&days=0
[Building Sakai] Question about assessment templates (samigo)
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Question-about-assessment-templates-samigo-td4996665.html#a4996665
[Building Sakai] Problems with rwiki performance
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/template/NodeServlet.jtp?tpl=search-page&node=1343168&query=Problems+with+rwiki+performance&days=0
[Building Sakai] Message disappeared in Forums, but it's there in the database
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Message-disappeared-in-Forums-but-it-s-there-in-the-database-td4983456.html#a4983456
[Building Sakai] Site Stats startup 'costs'
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Site-Stats-startup-costs-td4980680.html#a4981562
[Building Sakai] Tool placement id
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-Tool-placement-id-td4979902.html#a4979902
[Building Sakai] issues with contemt-runconversion.sh in 2.6.x
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Building-Sakai-issues-with-contemt-runconversion-sh-in-2-6-x-td4978538.html#a4978538
[DG: Teaching & Learning] 3rd party portfolio with Sakai
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-3rd-party-portfolio-with-Sakai-td4981298.html#a4981590
[Using Sakai] Working Sessions at Sakai Denver
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Working-Sessions-at-Sakai-Denver-td4967417.html#a4967417
[DG: Teaching & Learning] Selection Level Feedback in Samigo
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-Teaching-Learning-Selection-Level-Feedback-in-Samigo-td4950969.html#a4951607
[Portfolio] The Metaobj Resource Helper
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-The-Metaobj-Resource-Helper-td4981390.html#a4981390
[Portfolio] 2.7.0: conversion scripts (OSP, metaobj)
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Portfolio-2-7-0-conversion-scripts-OSP-metaobj-td4943333.html#a4943333
[Building Sakai] Gradebook question - Sakai-graded tests and relative weights
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Re-Building-Sakai-Gradebook-question-Sakai-graded-tests-and-relative-weights-td5005264.html#a5008624
[Using Sakai] FCKEditor Spell Check
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-FCKEditor-Spell-Check-td4999157.html#a4999157
[Using Sakai] Creating Library & Sakai 3 Integration Context Scenarios
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/Using-Sakai-Creating-Library-Sakai-3-Integration-Context-Scenarios-td4971256.html#a4971256
[DG: Teaching & Learning] 3rd party portfolio with Sakai
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-3rd-party-portfolio-with-Sakai-td4981298.html#a4993806
[DG: User Experience] Fwd: UIEtips: Baking Social Interfaces Into Your Design
http://sakai-project-mail-list-archives.1343168.n2.nabble.com/DG-User-Experience-Fwd-UIEtips-Baking-Social-Interfaces-Into-Your-Design-td4977379.html#a4977379
--------------------------------------
13. Events
2010 Sakai Annual Conference
Tuesday - Thursday, June 15-17, 2010
Pre-conference sessions: Monday, June 14, 2010
Hyatt Regency Tech Center
Denver, Colorado
http://sakaiproject.org/news/2010-sakai-conference-website-goes-live-call-proposals-now-open
Advance CAMP (Campus Architecture and Middleware Planning) Workshop
"The Second Identity Services Summit"
June 23-25, 2010
Raleigh, North Carolina
www.incommon.org/camp
2010 AuSakai Conference
Wednesday - Friday, September 15t-17
Pre-conference session: Wednesday, 15th September
North Sydney College, Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE
www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/AuSakai2010
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