[Deploying Sakai] URGENT: I must choose between Sakai and Moodle within 24 hours

[Warwick Chapman]

Hi All

This is my first post so please forgive me should I not be familiar with
protocol.

Please could I ask for some assistance.  I've been tasked with deploying a
learning platform for the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition
political party in South Africa.  We want to use this platform to further
and more effectively train all our public representatives and staff around
the country.

I have a report detailing the outcomes of a scoping working which I can make
available to anyone should they be interested but basically, the
requirements of the platform are as follows:

1. Online courses
2. Knowledgebase
3. Chat module for learner support
4. Forum
5. Must work on dialup-speed connections, though we expect most people to
have 256kbps-4096kbps connections
6. Simple to create and manage courses and assessment
7. Support multiple languages (SA has 11 official languages)
8. Work on mobile devices

The more I look at Sakai, the more it appears to me that out of the box it
meets more of these requirements than Moodle does, and it seems to me to be
better built and more sensible.

-- BUT --

I have been in the IT industry for 15 years as a developer, project manager
and executive focusing on Open Source solutions and Sakai is making me feel
like a real dum dum.  I have 2.6.2 demo running and am using Packt's "Sakai
Courseware Management" as a guide.

Something as simple as following the steps in "My First Project Site" are
leaving me wondering if Sakai is well documented enough for the average
non-University IT department user to deploy and manage.  I cannot seem to
find a "new" link when logged in as a non-admin user and as an admin, I
cannot find where to grant permission to the non-admin user to create a
project site.

Also, I cannot seem to easily find details relating to what hardware
requirements I should expect for a low-use deployment.  Pointers?

Warwick
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