e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Sakai

  • Migrating to Sakai

    When I speak to people from schools that are currently involved in an LMS selection process, I very often hear the following assumptions and line of reasoning:

    • Sakai 2 hasn’t set the world on fire, and anyway, it’s going to be replaced by Sakai 3 soon.
    • But Sakai 3 isn’t ready yet, and we aren’t sure exactly when it will be ready or how to go about evaluating it now.
    • Since we have to make a decision soon, we are going to have to forget Sakai as a candidate.

    This is a reasonable and understandable train of thought, but it is built upon mistaken beliefs about Sakai 2, Sakai 3, and the relationship between the two projects. The Sakai community has a vision and a plan that ensures both Sakai 2 and Sakai 3 will remain healthy and under active development for some time to come. In fact, far from being merely an awkwardly timed product transition, the two-product approach the community is taking actually provides what I believe is a unique strategy in the LMS space for supporting schools’ present needs, fulfilling their vision for their future, and providing a path from one to the other. Rather than being a reason to dismiss Sakai from consideration, the Sakai 2/Sakai 3 dichotomy is actually reason to look at the Sakai community and family of software especially closely.

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  • Sakai 3 Roadmap and Progress

    Up until now, it would have been fair to call Sakai 3 a mature experiment. Two years of work have been invested, mostly by Cambridge, to test out some ideas about the design, architecture, and development ecosystem of next-generation virtual learning environments. We have learned a lot from it, but the level of commitment to turn it from an experiment into a product system has been somewhat vague.

    That changed a couple of weeks ago at the Sakai conference in Denver. We now have a much clearer idea of when Sakai 3 might be deployable as a production system to meet different purposes.

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  • Ian Dolphin Appointed Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation

    I’m delighted to announce that Ian Dolphin is Sakai’s new Executive Director. Ian is an old hand in the community, having served two terms on the Foundation Board. He’s no stranger to open source and open education, having served on the boards for Jasig and Curriki as well. Most recently, he worked at the JISC in the UK, coordinating the multi-national eFramework project. Ian is a great guy who brings lots of relevant experience, an international perspective and, above all, the passion of a lifelong educator to the job.

    During the job search process, the Foundation really had an embarrassment of riches in terms of qualified applicants from both inside and outside the Sakai community. There were several candidates who I thought would have made fine choices that didn’t even make the first interview cut. The fact that Ian rose to the top of this impressive group says something about both his strengths in general and the fit between those strengths and the needs of the community at this juncture.

  • Some Strengths of Sakai 2: Part V

    This is the fifth and final installment from our friends at the University of North Carolina:

  • Some Strengths of Sakai 2: Part IV

    Here’s the fourth of five installments from our good friends at the University of North Carolina Sakai Pilot blog—this one on public versus private content:

  • Come to the Sakai 2010 Conference in Denver

    If you are Sakai-curious and want to know more about the platform and the community, you should come to the conference, which is going to be June 15-17 in Denver this year. I am delighted to say that our keynote speaker will be Anya Kamenetz.

  • Some Strengths of Sakai 2: Part III

    Here’s the third of five installments from our good friends at the University of North Carolina Sakai Pilot blog:

    For those who need to adopt an LMS before Sakai 3 will be ready but worry about making the migration, take a look at the progress being made in melding Sakai 2 with Sakai 3:

    Depending on how quickly Lance progresses and your own time line, it might be possible to introduce Sakai 2 within the Sakai 3 navigation from the very beginning in order to make the ultimate migration to Sakai 3 easier. We’re not quite there yet, and you’d want to look closely at the pros and cons, but it’s a possibility to consider.