[Announcements] Sakai Newsletter October 6, 2011
Margaret Wagner
mwagner at umich.edu
Mon Oct 17 12:21:21 PDT 2011
Sakai Newsletter
October 6, 2011
1. From the Executive Director
2. Jasig and Sakai Foundations Finalize Merger Plans
3. uMobile 1.0 GA Released!
4. Mary Miles Retires
5. OAE 1.0.1 Release Now Available
6. Jasig Unconference - November 2011
7. Call for Sakai to Participate in W3C Social Business Jam
8. Pedagogy Screencasts from the NYU OAE Pilot
9. EuroSakai -- A Great Success
10. Longsight Job Opening
11. Recent Email Group Discussions
------------------------------------------------
1. From the Executive Director
An Appeal: Please Share your Sakai Experiences!
We're continuing to redevelop the Sakai Foundation website. One of our
objectives is to make the site much more reflective of the practice of
the Sakai community: to showcase what we are, and what we do. I'd like
to start the ball rolling by making an appeal for you to consider
writing a case study of Sakai deployment in your school. When a
university or college begins to consider a change of learning
management system, or begins to work through issues surrounding
broader collaboration, they want to hear stories. Stories of
evaluation, success, setbacks and failures; warts-and-all genuine
community experiences, not marketing puff-pieces. One of the reasons
why I love my work with the Sakai community is its honesty and
openness. Please help put that on show by sharing your experience.
Guidelines for writing a Sakai Implementation Case Study
This is a set of pointers to the creation of a Sakai implementation
case study. Your story is important to the reader precisely because it
is *yours* specifically. Feel free to depart from this suggested
outline, and to provide as much (or as little) detail as you are
comfortable with. Remember, quotes from senior leaders, faculty and
students are particularly powerful. There is also particular interest
in cost of ownership details -- both from other potential adopters,
and from analysts who shape industry perspectives.
An illustration or two will help the Foundation present your case
study in as attractive way as possible. Photographs of individuals
quoted, learners or faculty using Sakai, or framing shots of your
campus are great. Don't worry about layout, the Foundation is happy
handling that side of things. If you are comfortable with using video,
short clips are often tremendously useful communicators. Again, don't
feel pressure to include all these media types; whatever you feel able
to provide will be of use.
Your case study will be made available on the Sakai Foundation
website. Please include rights information (normally which type of
Creative Commons license you prefer) with your copy.
Outline
1. Enough background on the institution/adopter for the reader to
make sense of the story.
2. The institutional problem space; strategic motivators for change.
3. The selection process itself; criteria, how the process was
organised, the choice. Comments from faculty and institutional
leadership are useful throughout, but particularly in this section.
4. If a pilot took place, then details are useful; why the pilot
group was selected, any detailed objectives? Faculty and student
experience of pilot -- again, any quotable comments useful.
Interactions with Sakai Community which helped?
5. Implementation. Phased over what period, with which target groups?
Comments from faculty and students regarding their experience.
Interactions with Sakai Community? Statistics -- how many users, how
many sites, over what period? Usage stats where available. Strategies
for content migration are of considerable interest to other
institutions. Consider including major systems integration challenges.
6. How adoption contributed to/met institutional strategic
objectives. Comparative total cost of ownership information is
particularly useful here. Specific stories of teaching, learning and
research collaboration "successes". Outstanding issues -- what were
the "warts", what problems did you overcome, or do you still have? Any
general or specific lessons to be drawn for other adopters?
Please send any materials for the case study to
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org. If you would like to discuss any
aspects of a potential case study, please drop me a line at the same
address.
Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
Twitter: d iandolphin24
------------------------------------------------
2. Jasig and Sakai Foundations Finalize Merger Plans
In 2010 the Jasig and Sakai Foundations undertook an evaluation of the
benefits and feasibility of bringing our two organizations together.
Following a positive initial investigation, work began after the 2010
EDUCAUSE conference to merge organizations. We are now approaching
the final stages of this process and wanted to take this opportunity
to report our progress.
The Jasig and Sakai Foundation Board of Directors have now
independently elected four members from each of their existing Boards
to serve on the "Founding Board" of the new common organization. A
list of the members elected by each Board is included below. A
Founding Board is a legal precondition for incorporating a new 501(c)3
Not-For-Profit entity which necessitates it formation at this point in
the process. Although the Founding Board will not have any legal
authority prior to incorporation they will be consulted and heavily
engaged as we finalize the merger process. Once incorporated,
community elections will be held to elect four additional Board
Members (details of the election process are being finalized in the
bylaws). Following a timeline to be established by the new Board (of
no more than three years in length), members of the Founding Board
will rotate off to allow their position to be filled by individuals
elected directly by the combined communities.
Following approval by our two communities, we plan to file for
incorporation early in the new year and gain non-profit status within
the first quarter of 2012. The specific timeline for finalizing the
incorporation process depends heavily on the how quickly we gain state
and federal approvals. During this time, the Founding Board will
also likely be working to form an Advisory Council of international
leaders within higher education to provide guidance as the new
organization matures. Additional details on this Advisory Council and
the merger, including an updated version of the bylaws and a draft
membership model, will be released to our communities for review and
comment in the coming weeks.
As we move into this final phase, we will also select a name for the
merged organization. It is important to emphasize that bringing
together Jasig and the Sakai Foundations will not dissolve or merge
our respective software communities or projects. Existing brands will
not go away, but will benefit from being exposed to the new audiences
reached by the new organization. The Sakai Collaboration and Learning
Environment will still be promoted and maintained as the Sakai
Collaboration and Learning Environment, Jasig uPortal as uPortal, and
so on. The new organization will build on the successes of the past in
developing brand recognition, without seeking to supplant existing
brands. Managing this branding issue is critical, and our respective
Boards have been dedicating significant attention to this issue. It
is within this context that we are now seeking input and suggestions
from our communities, and beyond, for the name of the new Foundation.
Next week, following the EDUCAUSE conference, we will be announcing a
Community Naming Process which we hope will stimulate community
members, instructors, and student groups to assist in this effort as
means to draw on the wealth of expertise within our communities. As
part of this initiative we are also releasing an updated version of a
document articulating the value of the new organization which was
first released in April 2011. The new version, which has been
re-titled "The Value of a Common Foundation" (see attached, web
version coming soon), provides new content based on feedback and
questions from our communities. It is important that our new name
reflect the communities and values of the new organization and we hope
this updated document will be useful in identifying appropriate names
for consideration. The final selection of a name for the new
Foundation will be the responsibility of the members of the Founding
Board.
We thank all of the members of our communities, as well as the many
other interested third parties that have provided invaluable feedback
as we have made progress towards merging our two organizations. We
truly believe that the new joined foundation will represent a positive
step forward both for our founding communities, but also for the use
of open source in institutions of higher education around the world.
Founding Board Members
Jens Haeusser, University of British Columbia
John Lewis, Unicon
Josh Baron, Marist College
Maggie Lynch, Thanos Partners
Michael Feldstein, Cengage Learning
Nate Angell, rSmart
Robert Sherratt, University of Hull
Tim Carroll, University of Illinois
Josh Baron
Chair, Sakai Foundation Board of Directors
Co-Chair, Jasig-Sakai Joint Working Group
------------------------------------------------
3. uMobile 1.0 GA Released!
Jasig is excited to announce the first general audience release of the
uMobile platform. uMobile provides an enterprise framework
distributing personalized, role-based content in a mobile environment.
The platform consists of 1) a server application providing a web-based
experience optimized for recent smartphone and tablet browsers and 2)
optional native apps for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) and
Android devices.
A uMobile quickstart download is available at
http://www.jasig.org/umobile/download. More information about uMobile,
including information on engaging with the community, can be found at
http://www.jasig.org/umobile, with a dozen screen shots available at
http://www.jasig.org/umobile/see-it.
Thanks,
Robert Sherratt
R.Sherratt at hull.ac.uk
(To see the full announcement, please go to
http://www.jasig.org/umobile-1-0-release-announcement.)
------------------------------------------------
4. Mary Miles Retires
Mary Miles, Sakai Foundation Administrator, retired on October 4 after
eight years of dedicated service. Here are some tweets and comments
from Sakai people:
"A big thank you from everyone in the Sakai community for 8 years of
service. Your dedication, professionalism and commitment to the
community. You'll be missed by the thousands of faces you've greeted
at the conferences each year."
"The Sakai Community is loosing one of its great contributors today
with the retirement of Mary Miles. Best of luck and wishes Mary!"
"Mary probably met more people in the Sakai Community than anyone."
"Mary enjoy a well deserved retirement -- we will miss you tireless efforts."
"It takes a lot of patience to wrangle Sakai nerds, I'll always
remember how well Mary Miles took care of us. Happy retirement!"
"Mary, thank you for everything. You kept this boat afloat!"
------------------------------------------------
5. OAE 1.0.1 Release Is Now Available
Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) 1.0.1
RELEASE DATE: 11 OCT 2011
The Sakai Community is pleased to announce the release of the Sakai
Open Academic Environment (OAE) version 1.0.1.
Sakai OAE is an open-source platform that promotes collaboration and
sharing between users and interoperability between systems. It
embraces a new vision for academic collaboration informed by the needs
of learners, teachers and researchers. Academic networking
capabilities encourage people to connect and participate actively in
communities that span beyond the traditional boundaries of classroom
and institution. Powerful capabilities around content -- creation,
authoring, reuse, presentation, and commenting -- permit mash-ups and
remixable experiences of ideas, connectivity, dialog and media.
Enhanced search capabilities aid discovery of people and content. A
widget-based architecture simplifies both development and integration
with external systems.
WHAT'S NEW
OAE 1.0.1 is a maintenance release that addresses over 80 issues.
Accessibility improvements are a major area of focus as is ensuring
initial support for Sakai OAE/CLE "hybrid" integration. Users who are
members of Sakai CLE sites can now access each site including their
CLE "My Workspace" from their personal dashboard. For a complete list
of changes see the release notes below.
DOWNLOADS
OAE 1.0.1 Web Start (one-click download/run for Demos)
http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/oae/1.0.1/webstart/sakaioae.jnlp
OAE 1.0.1 Binaries
http://source.sakaiproject.org/release/oae/1.0.1/binary/
Command line example: java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m
-jar org.sakaiproject.nakamura.app-1.0.1.jar 1> run.log 2>&1 &
OAE 1.0.1 Source
Front-end: https://github.com/sakaiproject/3akai-ux/tree/1.0.1
Back-end (Nakamura): https://github.com/sakaiproject/nakamura/tree/1.0.1
SparseMapContent Bundle:
https://github.com/sakaiproject/sparsemapcontent/tree/1.1-20110928
Solr Bundle:
https://github.com/sakaiproject/solr/tree/org.sakaiproject.nakamura.solr-1.0.1
Sakai CLE 2.8 Hybrid Integration Module
Tag: https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/hybrid/tags/hybrid-1.1.5
Tomcat zip overlay:
http://source.sakaiproject.org/maven2/org/sakaiproject/hybrid/hybrid-assembly/1.1.5/
RELEASE NOTES
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/OAEREL/OAE+1.0.1+release+notes
KNOWN ISSUES
https://jira.sakaiproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=13017
INSTALL GUIDES
OAE Demo Web Start Guide
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/oxNJB
OAE Deployment Guide
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/n4_CB
OAE/CLE Hybrid Deployment Guide
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/pIaCB
DEVELOPER DOCUMENTATION
OAE Widget SDK (alpha)
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/CCYhB
OAE Nakamura
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/x/HoDzAQ
MAIL LISTS
Subscribe at http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo
Deployers: oae-production at collab.sakaiproject.org
Developers: oae-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
Technical Reference Group: oae-trg at collab.sakaiproject.org
User Reference Group: oae-urg at collab.sakaiproject.org
LEAD INSTITUTIONS
OAE project leadership is provided by the following institutions with
support from the Sakai Foundation:
Cambridge University
Charles Sturt University
Georgia Tech
Indiana University
New York University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Michigan
LICENSE
Sakai OAE is released under the Educational Community License Version
2.0 http://sakaiproject.org/foundation-licenses.
Anthony Whyte
arwhyte at umich.edu
------------------------------------------------
6. Jasig Unconference - November 2011
Each Northern Fall/Autumn, our colleagues in Jasig run an
unconference. The event is participatory, with content contributed and
driven by attendees themselves. It presents a great opportunity,
particularly for software developers and implementors within the Sakai
community, to learn more about Jasig projects first hand.
If you are interested, more information about the 2011 Jasig
Unconference, which will be held Nov 7-11th at the UMass Online
Offices in Shrewsbury, MA, is available from:
https://wiki.jasig.org/display/JCON/Fall+2011+Unconference+-+Shrewsbury+-+UMassOnline
Jasig have reserved a block of rooms at the DoubleTree
Boston/Westborough at the special rate of 119.00/night, including
internet. Reserve your hotel room by Oct 15th to lock in this rate,
and be sure to mention the password: Jasig. For more about the hotel:
https://wiki.jasig.org/display/JCON/Fall+2011+Unconference+Hotel+Information
Best,
Ian Dolphin
Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
iandolphin at sakaifoundation.org
+44 7737 862863
Twitter: d iandolphin24
------------------------------------------------
7. Call for Sakai to Participate in W3C Social Business Jam (8-10
November 2011)
At a recent meeting with IBM, I learned about a "Social Business Jam"
that the W3C is sponsoring to explore a range of issues around the
topic of deployment of social media within business settings. I
mentioned some of the work that is taking place within the Sakai
Community, both through the work on Profile 2 in the CLE and the work
around academic networking being done with OAE, and there was a high
level of interest in the use cases around them. The "jam" (which is
an open online collaboration session that spans several days) is free
to participate in and those at W3C and IBM would be very interested in
having folks from the Sakai community who have been working on issues
around social media/networking participate. I am including some more
information below and a link to where you can get more details and
register (which opens Oct. 11th)
Josh Baron
Senior Academic Technology Officer
Marist College
------------
The W3C Social Business Jam is an online conversation among leaders
from around the world about the current state of social business, the
future role that social technologies can play in improving the bottom
line, and how social technology should evolve in order to support
business objectives. A primary objective of the Jam is to
cooperatively explore key trends and concepts in social business with
an eye towards how social standards can facilitate business goals. The
Jam should produce a better understanding for participants of how
businesses are using social technologies and the challenges they face
integrating the technologies into their existing environments.
Exploring new business approaches
The rapid growth of social networking inside and outside businesses as
well as the ability to access social technologies from mobile devices
enables employees to tap into the experience of others to accomplish
anything -- ranging from problem solving to the way goods and services
are purchased. How does this affect your business?
A world-wide, web-based event
The W3C Social Business Jam is a world-wide web-based event that takes
place over a 72 hour period. A variety of business and technical
discussions will take place online. Key decision makers and leaders in
the social business space, both from business and technology
providers, will attend the Jam to lend their insights to the discussion.
Building a blueprint for Social Business
In keeping with the cooperative nature of the social revolution, W3C
will summarize key findings and highlight creative ideas generated
during the Jam and share this content with the participants. The
output of the discussion serves as a collaboratively created blueprint
for continued discussions in community groups at W3C.
REGISTER AND GET DETAILS AT: http://www.w3.org/2011/socialbusiness-jam/
------------------------------------------------
8. Pedagogy Screencasts from the NYU OAE Pilot
Dear Colleagues,
The NYU OAE team has begun to create and post screencasts from our
pilot focusing on the use of OAE to achieve key pedagogical goals. The
first ones showcase using OAE for teaching portfolio-based writing
courses, which have important needs that are unmet by traditional LMS's.
Here is the direct link to our first: http://youtu.be/umZGVICtmAw .
You can read about it in context on our blog:
http://chartingatlas.blogspot.com/2011/10/pedagogy-screencasts-using-oae-for.html. More screencasts are being
developed.
We will continue to post these screencasts to the ATLAS channel on
YouTube and in our blog this semester; future subjects will include
using OAE for a game in science course, to create a library of
multimedia "expert" pages for a humanities course; for rich discussion
and networking in a graduate level nursing course; and more general
interviews with faculty and students.
Please let me know if you have questions or would like more information.
Best,
Lucy Appert, PhD
Director of Educational Technology
New York University
lucy.appert at nyu.edu
Kimberly Eke, Ph.D.
Sr. Mgr., Teaching & Learning Interactive
ITS Teaching, Learning, and Research Computing
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://blog.sakai.unc.edu
(919) 445-9472
------------------------------------------------
9. EuroSakai -- a Great Success
Here is an entry about Euro Sakai 2011 from the blog "Sakai in UK
Higher Education":
Posted on October 3, 2011 by Adam Marshall
11 people from UK HE attended the European Sakai conference. Delegates
from the UK represented the following bodies: the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Newcastle, Hull and Leeds and JISC/CETIS.
The highlight of the conference was almost certainly the extended
Sakai OAE demonstration.
The OAE is based upon the Sakai Learning Capability Design Lenses:
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/PED/Sakai+Learning+Capabilities+v+1.0. OAE is not yet complete but a combination of it and the Sakai CLE running as a Sakai Hybrid do just about cover every aspect. (Sakai CLE tools or sites can easily be displayed within the
OAE.)
The scenario that was demonstrated was the construction of a
collaborative research projects (with industrial contact). This
demonstrates:
- openness: layers of content opened up at appropriate levels:
"unlocking your content"
- reuse of material
- collaboration: authoring, review publishing
The demo showed how a student or researcher could go about putting
together a research proposal by collecting material from within Sakai
OAE and from material located on the web. Then people with similar
interests can be found and invited to help collaborative author a
proposal. The proposal can then be opened up for evaluation for public
consumption. Collaborators can be from within the University or from
external companies/institutions.
Other aspects of OAE were covered during other sessions: NYU spoke
about their impressive pilot (http://www.youtube.com/user/nyuatlas)
and the project team outlined the two-year road map. The emphasis will
be on integration with Sakai CLE, annotating documents, content
collections, lists of people and a widget SDK to allow individuals and
institutions to easily develop their own "tools".
The OAE is currently in a very usable state. It has just had it's
first release and is ready for institutions to download and deploy as
a pilot.
There were many other interesting sessions including presentations
about Mobile interfaces and the Mobile Sakai project, Open Courseware,
the benefits of open source software, new tools, the upcoming "Neo"
portal and integration with Internet2 Grouper.
The social side of the conference is also very important and it was
nice to hear more about the Sakai initiatives at Leeds, Newcastle and
Bath Universities. It is great to see that the word is spreading in
the UK.
There have also been many opportunities for UK institutions to engage
in collaborative projects with European and American partners. The
Sakai Mobile Project is a good example of this.
------------------------------------------------
10. Longsight Job Opening
Longsight is looking for another talented and motivated Java developer
to join our team in supporting Sakai. This is a great opportunity to
work on diverse and exciting projects with an exceptional group of
colleagues.
This full-time, salaried position comes with a very competitive salary
and benefits, including fully-paid health/dental/vision/life
insurance, paid vacation and holidays, and the opportunity to work
from nearly any location. We support professional development and
expect our employees to grow and evolve their positions.
Details of the position are posted at
http://www.longsight.com/blog/position-open-java-developer
Scott Siddall
siddall at longsight.com
------------------------------------------------
11. Recent Email Group Discussions
[Building Sakai] trunk / nightly2 broken ...
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--trunk---nightly2-broken-...-td32669332.html
[Building Sakai] Student's Dropbox name
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Student%27s-Dropbox-name-td32669253.html
[Building Sakai] Problem with email templates in Sakai Trunk
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Problem-with-email-templates-in-Sakai-Trunk-td32668668.html
[Building Sakai] Sakai Trunk and Maven 3
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Sakai-Trunk-and-Maven-3-td32668654.html
[Announcements] Jasig and Sakai Foundations Finalize Merger Plans
http://old.nabble.com/-Announcements--Jasig-and-Sakai-Foundations-Finalize-Merger-Plans-td32668386.html
[Building Sakai] [stuart.freeman at et.gatech.edu: [oae-dev] CAS
Authentication for Hybrid deployments]
[Building Sakai] Create Turnitin Class & Assignment Process Flow in SAKAI
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Create-Turnitin-Class---Assignment-Process-Flow-in-SAKAI-td32667187.html
[Building Sakai] Another slow query
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Another-slow-query-td32667518.html
[Building Sakai] Heavy Samigo query
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Heavy-Samigo-query-td32638333.html
[Building Sakai] for people running mysql 5.1.33 - 48
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--for-people-running-mysql-5.1.33---48-td32656327.html
[Building Sakai] Urgent help: How to change the height pixels between
two tools
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Urgent-help%3A-How-to-change-the-height-pixels-between-two-tools-td32644424.html
[Building Sakai] Portal Chat
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Portal-Chat-td32645007.html
[Building Sakai] new svn accounts for msub
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--new-svn-accounts-for-msub-td32655678.html
[Building Sakai] Gradebook 2 in project sites
http://old.nabble.com/-Building-Sakai--Gradebook-2-in-project-sites-td32647096.html
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