[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter December 8, 2011

Margaret Wagner mwagner at umich.edu
Tue Dec 13 08:18:58 PST 2011



Sakai Newsletter


December 8, 2011

1. From the Executive Director

2. Indiana University and the University of Michigan Increase  
Investment in OAE

3. Make Sure Sakai is Represented!

4. Sakai 2.7.2 and 2.8.1 Maintenance Releases

5. AuSakai 2012 Conference -- 18 - 19 September 2012

6. Teaching with Sakai Webinar Series: Session 04

7. Marist College Seeking Instructional Designer


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1. From the Executive Director

I am pleased to announce that Steve Swinsburg, of the Australian  
National University, David Ackerman, of New York University, and Seth  
Theriault, of Columbia University have been elected to the Board of  
Directors of the Sakai Foundation.

The elections were close run, with the second two of three candidates  
receiving an identical number of votes. In these unprecedented  
circumstances, and with only two positions vacant, the existing Board  
were polled for their preferences on how to proceed. They determined,  
without any vote to the contrary, that all three candidates should be  
declared elected -- hence the slight delay in announcing results.

I would like to welcome the three successful candidates to the  
Foundation Board, and to thank them for volunteering their time and  
effort to the Board.

Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
Twitter: d iandolphin24

Voting:

38 Institutional Representatives voted, with Steve Swinsburg (ANU)  
receiving 28 votes, David Ackerman (NYU) 20 votes, and Seth Theriault  
(Columbia) 20 votes.


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2. Indiana University and the University of Michigan Increase  
Investment in Sakai Open Academic Environment Software

Indiana University (IU) and the University of Michigan have committed  
to more than doubling their investment in the Sakai community product  
suite; increasing their commitment to the Sakai Open Academic  
Environment (OAE) project from $200K to $500K per year. The OAE  
project represents the Sakai community's new vision for collaboration  
and learning software for higher education.

"With academic social networking and content discovery features,  
support of emerging learner-centered pedagogies, and flexible and  
extensible technical architecture, the OAE has the potential to  
reshape higher education," said Brad Wheeler, IU vice president for  
information technology and chief information officer.

In 2004, IU, the University of Michigan, MIT, and Stanford jointly  
launched the Sakai project to create open-source course management  
tools and related software for the higher education community. Today,  
the Sakai Foundation is made up of more than 68 member institutions  
and a dozen corporate affiliates.  In total, the Sakai Collaboration  
and Learning Environment (CLE) learning management software is being  
used in over 350 institutions.

The recent increase in investment will expedite the development of  
OAE, encouraging institutions to transition their developmental  
resources from CLE into OAE.  Indiana University and University of  
Michigan have been major users and financial supporters of CLE since  
its inception, and after core OAE functionality is available, both  
plan to run CLE and OAE systems in parallel to ease the transition for  
faculty and students.

"The renewed and expanded commitment by Indiana University and the  
University of Michigan to the Sakai product suite continues the  
tradition of partnership and innovation between these two great  
institutions," said Laura Patterson, chief information officer and  
associate vice president of information and technology services at the  
University of Michigan. "The time is right to accelerate the new  
culture of learning that is emerging to meet 21st century demands for  
life-long, life-wide engagement."

In addition to Indiana and Michigan, the OAE project's founding  
institutional partners include Cambridge University, UC Berkeley, New  
York University, Charles Sturt University, and Georgia Tech. The  
project released OAE version 1.0.2 on October 21, 2011, and core  
functionality will become available over the next 12 to 24 months.   
See http://sakaiproject.org/node/2239


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3. Make Sure Sakai is Represented!

Birmingham University (UK) has been undertaking a survey of LMS/VLE  
use across Higher Education. Please take a moment to add information  
about your Sakai instance at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au_thP0JDFvidHA4WGYwbFpUTmh4Z3RjSVQzQTViaGc&hl=en_US#gid=0


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4. Sakai 2.7.2 and 2.8.1 Maintenance Releases

The Sakai community has been busy moving forward with multiple  
projects and releases. We are pleased to announce availability of both  
the Sakai 2.7.2 and 2.8.1 maintenance releases.

- Release documentation and artifacts for 2.7.2 are available at  
http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/2.7.2/

- Release documentation and artifacts for 2.8.1 are available at  
http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/2.8.1/

We are also working on the Sakai CLE 2.9.0 major release, which  
contains over 500 bug fixes, security fixes and new features, with an  
anticipated release date next year.

Our thanks go out to the dedicated Sakai Community volunteers from  
around the world who have made this release possible.

Beth Kirschner
bkirschn at umich.edu


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5. AuSakai 2012 Conference -- 18 - 19 September 2012

The AuSakai 2012 conference will be held on 18 - 19 September 2012 on  
the Bathurst Campus, NSW and hosted by Charles Sturt University. The  
conference will finish around 3pm on 19 September 2012.

The theme will focus on the innovative use of Sakai.

The international keynote speakers will be:

- Dr Lucy Appert, an academic and also Director of Educational  
Technology, New York University. Lucy is further the chair of the  
Sakai Open Academic Environment user reference group.

- Ian Dolphin, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation.

We hope that you will be able to present/attend.  More information  
will follow.

Make sure it's in your 2012 diary.

Regards

Philip Uys
Director, Strategic Learning and Teaching Innovation
Division of Learning and Teaching Services
Charles Sturt University
PUys at csu.edu.au


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6. Teaching with Sakai Webinar Series -- Session 04

Dear colleagues and friends,

Please plan to attend the fourth session in the Teaching with Sakai  
webinar series!

Engaging Medical Students in Pathology: Podcasts and Zooming Images

Wednesday, December 14, 2011
3:00 pm EST; noon PST
Register now at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2359146270

Dr. Howard Reisner (UNC-Chapel Hill) is teaching a one-week block that  
introduces second year medical students to pathology -- specifically,  
the causes and progression of disease as expressed in tissue. The  
teaching goals are to:

- Introduce medical students to common disease processes as expressed  
in tissue

- Provide case-based examples of disease in tissue to provide practice  
for students in recognizing tissue-based lesions using virtual  
microscopy

- Promote active learning by providing a disease identification  
challenge to students

This webinar will focus on how Dr. Reisner is using interactive,  
"zoomable"  images (i.e., virtual microscopy) and video podcasts in  
Sakai to meet these goals in a medical curriculum setting.


The Teaching with Sakai Webinar Series

The Teaching with Sakai webinar series highlights effective teaching  
practices using Sakai.  Each webinar in the series begins with a  
20-minute presentation followed by facilitated discussion.

We hope to see you online!

Kim Eke
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Jon Hays
University of California-Berkeley

Kate Ellis
Indiana University-Bloomington


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7. Marist College Seeking Instructional Designer

Marist College is seeking applicants for the full time position of  
Instructional Designer. This position will report to the Assistant  
Director of Academic Technology and eLearning and play a central role  
in helping the college achieve new strategic goals associated with  
distance education and using instructional technologies to enhance the  
teaching and learning experience. The position will provide faculty  
with pedagogical and instructional design consultation related to  
course, module, and whole curriculum development activities for  
traditional, online, and hybrid courses.

More details and application can be found at: http://jobs.marist.edu

Thanks,

Joshua Baron
Director, Academic Technology and eLearning
Marist College
Josh.Baron at marist.edu
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