[Using Sakai] Knowledgeable Newbie Questions

[Marshall Feldman]

Hi,

I am very new to Sakai but not new to computers. My university is moving 
from WebCT to Sakai next fall, and I'm now starting to think about 
porting my courses. I teach one course in particular completely on-line 
in the Fall and Spring semesters and during Summer Session. I also work 
out of three offices (home and at two campuses), with an iMac and two 
PCs. I want to approach Sakai with an eye towards efficient long-term 
use, and I've searched the web for help. Unfortunately, almost 
everything I've come across falls into two categories that are not very 
useful for my purposes: (1) sophisticated information about developing 
Sakai software or (2) very elementary information about using Sakai for 
course delivery. I am hoping others on this list can point me in a more 
fruitful direction.

Here is how I've approached course maintenance in the past using WebCT.

   1. I try to maintain the course as I would a regular web site. Each
      of the three computers I use has a complete mirror of the course
      as it exists on WebCT. This is not always possible as pages in
      WebCT often have header or footer blocks that must be maintained
      separate from the main content, and WebCT embeds certain kinds of
      tools in its web pages. These tools have no corresponding objects
      away from WebCT. For headers and footers, I generally use a
      directory for the entire page in which I keep separate HTML files
      for headers and footers. In this directory, I also keep a main
      html file which resembles the body of the WebCT page.
   2. I use an IDE to maintain the site. I used to rely on Eclipse with
      the Aptana plugin, but now I'm using NetBeans. I use the IDE for
      writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScripts. I am thinking of using
      KompoZer for the times that appearance is more important than
      programming.
   3. Because our Fall and Spring semesters and Summer Session all have
      different numbers of weeks, I have to maintain three separate
      versions of the course. This causes problems if, for example, in
      one semester I modify an assignment that's present in all three
      versions, then I somehow have to replicate it to the other two. On
      the other hand, some content never appears in the shorter versions
      of the course. I have been using Subversion (SVN) to maintain
      different versions of the course. Both Eclipse and NetBeans have
      SVN extensions, and I use the very excellent TortoiseSVN under
      Windows XP and the almost-as-good SCPlugin on OS X.
   4. For graphics I use Gimp and Inkscape.
   5. For uploading files I've tried using WebDAV, but it's flaky on the
      Windows machines. I therefore have had to rely on WebCT's manual
      tools for uploading and downloading files individually. I'd much
      prefer to use FTP -- even better, to use FTP with synchronization.
   6. To coordinate the mirrored versions of the site (of the entire
      course actually), I've been using Micrsoft Live Sync, a free
      peer-to-peer synchronizer. It works pretty well, although
      sometimes it does not seem to sync. It can also screw up
      directories that are versioned with SVN if I'm not careful.
   7. I'd like to use things like mind maps to help students find their
      ways through the course and through the content. WebCT is so rigid
      that I haven't even attempted this.
   8. Although it seems to be taking forever, I am in the process of
      making flash movie lectures for the entire course. I currently use
      PowerPoint for the basic lecture, play the slide show and use
      Audacity to record narration, edit the narration into
      slide-specific chunks, insert each chunk into the corresponding
      slide, adjust timings, and iSpring Converter to make the flash
      file. Then I upload the file to WebCT and put a link to the file
      into a "Content Module," which is WebCT's tool for organizing
      individual lessons. I would really like to make this process less
      labor intensive.

As I move over to Sakai, I'd like to maintain or improve on these 
methods. I would really appreciate any advice or pointers to 
documentation or tutorials (e.g. "Tutorial: Composing Web Pages for 
Sakai,"  "Using JavaScript to access the Sakai API From a Course," 
"Synchronizing Local Files with Sakai," etc.) that would address these 
issues or point me in the right direction.

Thanks.

    Marsh Feldman
    The University of Rhode Island

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