For the Sakai Educational Partners Program

30 March 2005

Sakai Opens Community Source Software Conferences
The Sakai Educational Partners Program leads off a week of open source software conferences. Beginning June 8-10, the Sakai conference reviews the spring release of its Sakai 1.5 collaboration and learning environment software and demonstrates the June release of Sakai 2.0 with new extensions, including the MELETE authoring tool and an integrated grade book. The attendees will discuss plans for partner implementations and development contributions, “best practices” for using education technology, and the rapid evolution of the Sakai Educational Partners Program.
The Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) Conference follows June 10-11 focusing on its OSP electronic portfolio software, implementation planning, and future development. OSP 2.0 electronic portfolio software, available with Sakai integration, has been released for testing and will be available in June.
The JA-SIG Collaborative conference June 12-14 focuses on their uPortal enterprise portal software and the use of Java in higher education applications.
More than 700 people are expected to attend the conferences and community events at the Marriott Baltimore Inner Harbor at Camden Yards. The open source software from the three organizations is being widely implemented in colleges and universities.
About Sakai
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the University of Michigan, Indiana and Stanford Universities, and MIT to develop a collaborative learning environment software from their existing software systems. The Sakai Educational Partners Program is a growing collaboration of 69 colleges and universities from ten nations funding software development, adapting and implementing the software for local use, and developing best practices for the use of education technology. www.sakaiproject.org
About The Open Source Portfolio Initiative
The Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Indiana University to further develop an electronic portfolio for higher education based on previous work and participants of the initiative. www.theOSPI.org

About the JA-SIG Collaborative
Founded to advance the use of open technology for administrative and academic applications in higher education and to build a global academic community of interest, the JA-SIG Collaborative developed uPortal, an open source enterprise portal to meet the specific needs of colleges and universities. www.JA-SIG.org

Contacts

For the Sakai Educational Partners Program:

Jim Farmer, Sakai community Liaison

cellphone +1-405-508-9264

For the Open Source Portfolio Initiative

Brad Wheeler, Associate Vice President for Community Source Initiatives and Associate Professor of Information Systems, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

For the JA-SIG Collaborative

Carl W. Jacobson, Director, Management Information Sytems

University of Delaware

1 30 March 2005