[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter May 12, 2011
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Fri May 20 17:28:35 PDT 2011
Sakai Newsletter
May 12, 2011
1. From the Executive Director
2. Sakai 2011 Los Angeles Conference Programme
3. Hold the date: EuroSakai 26, 27 and 28 September 2011, Amsterdam
4. AuSakai 2011 -- Call for papers (Reminder)
5. San Luis Extends Sakai Platform to all Students
6. Edia Sakai Tools have been Migrated to Sakai 2.7.x
7. Announcing a Tool and Docs to Help with Alternate Form Renderers
8. Adobe Connect and OpenMeetings, New Tools for Sakai
9. Pepperdine University Joins Sakai Foundation Partner Program
10. Mobile Sakai Management Announcement
11. Job Opening: Indiana University
12. Recent Email Group Discussions
13. Events
--------------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
Sakai relies on the contributions of both institutions and
individuals. Every year we celebrate those individuals who have made
an exceptional contribution to the community by recognizing them as
Sakai Fellows. The contribution made by Fellows might be in a number
of areas; sharing best practice in learning, teaching or research,
technical development and design, or community coordination. The
Fellows Programme provides a modest financial allowance to Fellows to
help offset the cost of their Sakai-related activity. It's our way of
recognizing, encouraging, and spreading good practice.
I'm very pleased to announce the Sakai Fellows for 2011. They are:
- Rob Coyle, Johns Hopkins University
- Carl Hall, Hallway Technologies
- David Roldán Martínez, Universidas Politécnica Valencia - Megan May,
Indiana University
- Zhen Qian, University of Michigan
- Brian Richwine, Indiana University
Brief bios of the 2011 Fellows can be found at:
http://www.sakaiproject.org/sakai-fellows
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the 2011 Fellows
Selection Committee -
- Alan Berg
- Clay Fenlason
- David Goodrum
- Beth Kirschner
- Maggie Lynch
- Stephen Marquard
- Nico Matthijs
- Mathieu Plourde
- Anthony Whyte
Given the wealth of talent and commitment in the Sakai Community, it's
my belief that this group has one of the harder jobs around! Many
thanks for your time, efforts and deliberations.
Regards,
Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
--------------------------------------------
2. 2011 Sakai Los Angeles Conference Program
I'm pleased to announce that the core conference program for the 2011
Sakai Los Angeles Conference is now available at:
https://www.concentra-cms.com/program/Sakai/2011-sakai-conference/
We received significantly more presentation proposals for the
conference than the programme could accommodate. The Conference
Committee has been working diligently to ensure that the conference
programme is as representative of the Sakai Community as possible, and
has therefore suggested that a number of conference presentations be
merged. We're still negotiating some of these mergers, so don't be
concerned if you don't see your presentation in the current programme
-- you should receive an email regarding this. And remember to check
back as the programme fills out over the next week.
As a consequence, we're keeping early bird registrations open until
20th May -- make sure you sign up as soon as possible to take
advantage of the reduced rate.
More details about the conference, including registration information,
can be found at:
http://www.sakaiproject.org/sakai-conference-2011
If you're looking for maps, information on getting around Los Angeles,
dining and things to do, try the conference confluence pages at:
http://bit.ly/sakai11
You'll also find details there of our conference Citizen Journalism
initiative, sharing presentations with Slideshare, Twitter, and much
more.
See you in Los Angeles!
Regards,
Ian Dolphin Executive
Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
--------------------------------------------
3. Hold the date: EuroSakai 26th, 27th and 28th September 2011, Amsterdam
I am pleased to announce that the European Sakai Conference will be
held in Amsterdam on the 26th, 27th and 28th September. The
Universiteit van Amsterdam and Edia Educatie Technologie have
generously agreed to lead the organisation of the conference. Expect
further announcements shortly.
Best,
Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
--------------------------------------------
4. AuSakai 2011 -- Call for papers (Reminder)
Dear All,
The Australian National University is pleased to announce AuSakai 2011
"Towards an Open Academic and Collaborative Environment." The
conference will be held on the 13th and 14th of September in Canberra
and will be open to all universities and organisations that are using
or considering using Sakai.
Call for presentations is now open, and will close on the 27th of May
2011. This conference arrives as the community is experiencing
significant growth and innovation. Exciting new development projects
are underway with collaboration from designers, developers, and
faculty members. Our community is expanding rapidly with new adoption
of Sakai, new investment in Sakai, and emerging partnerships with
other higher education communities. Our collective knowledge of the
practices and pedagogies that enable us to improve learning and
collaboration through the use of technology has never been greater.
We are also very excited to announce our international keynote
speakers for this conference: Ian Dolphin, Lance Speelmon, Josh Baron
and David Goodrum.
We encourage you to submit a presentation and be a part of this
growing community.
When and Where: Tuesday 13 & Wednesday 14 September 2011
Location: The Australian National University, Canberra Networking
Dinner: 13 September 2011
For further details, and presentation template, please visit:
http://ausakai.anu.edu.au
Regards,
Steve Swinsburg, on behalf of the AuSakai 2011 Planning Committee
steve.swinsburg at gmail.com
--------------------------------------------
5. San Luis Extends Sakai Platform to All Students
A project in the Argentine province of San Luis will make the Sakai
environment available to more than 58,000 elementary students, and a
considerable number of high school students. The initiative builds on
the experience of the "All the Kids Online" plan.
"The extension of the plan enables broader access to the digital Sakai
collaboration platform. This will allow the use of educational content
developed by the Digital Educational Resources Group of the University
of La Punta (ULP). Thus, all students in primary and secondary
education in the province will have access to the use of high-quality
digital tools and content. They will be able to interact not only with
their teachers, but also with one another, creating the largest online
educational network in Argentina," said Maria Clelia Odicino, Academic
Secretary of the ULP.
The ULP explained that the government's decision to extend the use of
the platform to all provincial schools was based on improvements in
the performance of students involved in the "All the Kids Online"
Project during 2009 and 2010. Forty-one schools have been involved in
the project to date, with University staff measuring the progress of
students who used the environment. "Measurements in Language,
Mathematics and Natural Sciences demonstrated significant improvements
in student performance, which served to highlight the positive impact
of these technologies in education," said Odicino.
The Sakai platform integrates software for educational management
together with the administration of digital resources for learning and
teaching. It also enables the management of academic and
administrative educational quality. This is necessary for monitoring
purposes. The project uses a management model based around continuous
improvement, under the international standards ISO 9001-2008. Earlier
this year the University issued a call for bids to implement the
platform, certify quality, provide technical support and helpdesk
assistance to over 400 schools.
"This platform allows all members of the education system to access a
fundamental tool to further its mission, maximizing the educational
management through monitoring key indicators. It also promotes
collaborative learning, making it easy for students, teachers and
parents, through on-line access to educational content, news and
academic progress and school performance observations. This will allow
the educational system to reach beyond the physical boundaries of
traditional classroom constraints to create virtual learning
environments," said Alicia Bañuelos, rector of the ULP.
She said that with the extension of the Sakai platform to the 58,000
primary school children in the province, "San Luis, again, is put at
the forefront of educational projects in Latin America." In that
regard, she added that "the Province began to massively invest, not
only in the delivery of netbooks and learning support software, in
which it was a pioneer, but also the massive use of digital
educational platforms supported by the world's most prestigious
scholarly institutions."
Regarding quality management, the Chancellor announced that the system
is being implemented first in 100 schools, then generalized to all
educational institutions in San Luis." This will allow the education
system to be available to children and young people, promoting the
excellence that is required in the world today. This plan is unique,
and we are proud to meet the challenge, which we share with the
Ministries of Education, Finance and Progress. The CIPE (electronic
document ID), moreover, will allow parents to receive school
information involving their children in www.puntano.net portal,
currently under development. The Province of San Luis is accelerating
digital inclusion for digital prosperity with the participation of all
involved," said Bañuelos.
Unitech, as a Sakai Commercial Affiliate, will be in charge of
implementation's support of Sakai.
Aníbal H Carmona
Presidente, Unitech
anibalc at unitech.com.ar
--------------------------------------------
6. Edia Sakai Tools have been Migrated to Sakai 2.7.x
Description
Edia has migrated all their Sakai Tools available in the Sakai contrib
directory to version 2.7.x. Included are the following tools:
- Edia Sakai Community
- Edia Sakai Create Site
- Edia Sakai Invite
- Edia Sakai Knowledgebase
- Sakai Maps
- Sakai Scorm Project
- Edia Sakai Site Select
- Edia Sakai Skin Manager
The Sakai community of the University of Amsterdam UvAcommunities has
made this migration possible.
Availability
https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/edia/
Credits
Many thanks to UvAcommunities, Luis Fernandez, Roland Groen, Maarten
van Hoof, and Jan Vesely.
Melvin Wevers
Edia -- Educatie Technologie
www.edia.nl
melvin at edia.nl
--------------------------------------------
7. Announcing a Tool and Docs to Help with Alternate Form Renderers
The University of Michigan (U-M) has done some work to try to make the
creation of alternate form renderers (custom renderers) easier. First,
Noah Botimer created a utility called xslt-façade that makes it much
easier to run transformations locally in an application such as
Oxygen. The following is from Noah's introduction to the tool:
The process of working with XSLT files for Portfolio Templates and
Forms can be laborious to implement when needing to continually upload
materials and preview them in a running Sakai installation. U-M has
developed a utility to help make this process more manageable. It is
called xslt-facade since it provides a façade for the runtime support
of Sakai/OSP (by way of the XsltFunctions extension). It allows the
XSL files to be created and run offline without any changes, to
accelerate the process and afford the use of tools like a debugger.
I then created a document that gives necessary conceptual information
about "metaobj" and custom renderers, explains how to set up your
environment, and provides a few tutorials on creating custom
renderers. The document is aimed at people starting out, preferably
who have some familiarity with creating XSD schemas, though that is
not necessary.
The xslt-façade utility can be found at:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/OSP/Custom+XSLT+offline+with+xslt-facade
The documentation and supporting files for working through the
tutorials are at:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/OSP/Creating+Custom+Renderers
On that page I also included a zip file of XSDs that Gonzalo Silverio
created when he was first figuring metaobj out. I found them
indispensable when I was just learning about XSDs and custom
renderers. They help with custom renderers because they help you
understand the way that XSD elements get translated into HTML, which
is what you will be doing in your custom renderer.
And while we're on documentation, don't forget about Sean Keesler's
related work on creating Portfolio Templates at:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/OSPDOC/Portfolio+Templates
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know.
Erica Ackerman
ericaack at umich.edu
--------------------------------------------
8. We are Proud to Present New Tools for Sakai: Adobe Connect and OpenMeetings
Hi to all,
We at Samoo with the sponsorship of five Spanish universities
(Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Universidad de Lleida,
Universidad de Murcia, Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia and
Universidad Pública de Navarra) have developed two tools for
integrating Sakai with Adobe Connect and with OpenMeetings.
You can read more about these and download the source at:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/ADBCNT/Home
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/OPENMTG/Home
They are fully functional, but we'd like to improve the integration
with new features. Of course you are welcome to test and help, and to
give ideas.
¡Un saludo!
Diego del Blanco Orobitg
Director de Operaciones
diego.delblanco at samoo.es
--------------------------------------------
9. Pepperdine University Joins Sakai Foundation Partner Program
Dear Sakai Community,
I just wanted to share the good news that Pepperdine University has
joined the Sakai Foundation. In the fall of 2010 we decided to adopt
Sakai as our official learning management system. We fully
transitioned to Sakai on January 1, 2011. To support the great work
of the Sakai community, we recently decided to join the Sakai
Foundation. We're very grateful for everyone's efforts making Sakai a
great platform for teaching, learning, and research.
You can read our press release here:
http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/newsevents/news/2011/pepperdinesakaipartner.htm
In addition, we're excited that the North American 2011 Sakai
Conference will be in our backyard, Los Angeles, California! Don't be
surprised if you see several people from Pepperdine at the event. We
invited over 50 of our university faculty and staff members to
participate in this year's Sakai conference. So that you have a great
visit to Los Angeles, we've also contributed to the "Dining and Things
to Do" page of the conference gateway wiki.
Video: The Value of Attending the Annual Sakai Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mvs39nAYUI
2011 Sakai Conference Gateway: Dining and Things to Do
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/CONF2011/Dining+and+Things+To+Do
So, thank you, all, for creating a powerful and flexible platform to
promote teaching, learning, and research. We're proud to become a
partner, and we hope to see many of you at the conference in June!
Sincerely,
Alan Regan
MFA Manager, Technology and Learning
Information Technology
Alan.Regan at pepperdine.edu
--------------------------------------------
10. Mobile Sakai Management Announcement
In the recent past, Internet-capable handheld devices have become
widely available. Institutions in many parts of the world are
beginning to enable mobile device access to campus services. The
Sakai community as a whole is already aware of the importance of
mobile devices and mobile education. However, at present, mobile
development efforts have been scattered across individual institutions
with little coordination and collaboration.
In response to this, the Universities of Cambridge, Florida, Indiana,
and Oxford, with the support of the Sakai Foundation, are now a
launching a "Mobile Sakai " collaborative project to expand upon
current, limited mobile functionality and to develop frameworks usable
by local institutions to integrate Sakai into their own mobile
initiatives. It is the intent of this announcement to invite
additional participants and institutions to join with us in this
project.
The proposal outlining the Mobile Sakai project can be found at:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MOBILE/Home
and additional information and opportunities for questions, comments,
discussion, and networking will be available at next month's North
American Sakai Conference in Los Angeles. As additional information
about conference sessions and meetings related to this project becomes
available, it will be posted at the project site listed above.
Douglas F. Johnson, Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Learning Services
Office of Academic Technology University of Florida
wanderer at ufl.edu
--------------------------------------------
11. Job Opening: Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is in search of an Instructional Consultant
and Distance Learning Specialist to work in the newly formed Center
for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
For more information about working at IU, see: http://www.indiana.edu/~uhrs/
For a complete job description and to apply, go to:
https://jobs.iu.edu/joblisting/index.cfm?jlnum=3668&search=2
Thanks,
Kate Ellis
Principal Instructional Technology Specialist
University Information Technology Services
kdellis at indiana.edu
--------------------------------------------
12. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] Building a custom master pom
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Building-a-custom-master-pom-to31648471.html#a31651765
[Building Sakai] Conditional Release on Sakai 2.8
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Conditional-Release-on-sakai-2.8-to31636242.html#a31636242
[Building Sakai] Error when add participants.
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Error-when-add-participants.-to31645098.html#a31645098
[Building Sakai] Gradebook import of MS-Excel 2011
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Gradebook-import-of-MS-Excel-2011-to31645968.html#a31645968
[Building Sakai] How to find undocumented properties in code
http://old.nabble.com/Re%3A--Building-Sakai--How-to-find-undocumented-properties-in-code-to31651656.html#a31651656
[Building Sakai] Lots of NameNotFoundExceptions following 2.7 upgrade
- related to SAK-6239
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Lots-of-NameNotFoundExceptions-following-2.7-upgrade---related-to-SAK-6239-to31631594.html#a31631594
[Building Sakai] melete 2.8.2 and sakai 2.8
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--melete-2.8.2-and-sakai-2.8-to31636792.html#a31636792
[Building Sakai] Opensylabus tool
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Opensylabus-tool-to31636284.html#a31636284
[Building Sakai] Possible Bug in Message Center/Forums
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Possible-Bug-in-Message-Center-Forums-to31650079.html#a31650079
[Building Sakai] Site Information Display
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Site-Information-Display-to31631563.html#a31631563
[Building Sakai] WebDav on Sakai
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--WebDav-on-Sakai-to31637960.html#a31637960
[Portfolio] getting current user's userId
http://old.nabble.com/-Portfolio--getting-current-user%27s-userId-to31603921.html#a31603921
[Building Sakai] Feedback about some feature we are willing to contribute
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Feedback-about-some-feature-we-are-willing-to-contribute-to31549552.html#a31549552
[DG: User Experience] Anyone going to CHI in May?
http://old.nabble.com/-DG%3A-User-Experience--Anyone-going-to-CHI-in-May--to31317161.html#a31317161
[DG: User Experience] Feedback about some feature we are willing to contribute
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Feedback-about-some-feature-we-are-willing-to-contribute-to31549552.html#a31549552
[DG: User Experience] Fwd: [WG: Accessibility] Fwd: [Building Sakai]
Sakai & MathJax
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Sakai---MathJax-to31387087.html#a31387087
--------------------------------------------
13. Events
Jasig's Spotlight on Open Source Conference
May 23 - 25, 2011
Supplementary Seminars May 22nd and 25th
Developer Days, May 26 - 27
Westin Westminster
Westminster, Colorado 80020 USA
http://www.jasig.org/jasigs-spotlight-open-source
Sakai North American Conference
June 14 -16, 2011
Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles.
June 13 and 16 -- pre-conference workshops and project coordination
meetings www.sakaiproject.org/sakai-conference-2011
AuSakai 2011 "Towards an Open Academic and Collaborative Environment"
Tuesday 13 & Wednesday 14 September 2011
Location: The Australian National University, Canberra
Networking Dinner: 13 September 2011
http://ausakai.anu.edu.au
EuroSaka Conference
September 26, 27, and 28, 2011
Amsterdam
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