Sakai Summer Conference Overview
Sakai Education Partners Program
June 8-10, 2005 – Baltimore, Maryland
As Sakai is transforms from a software development project to a community designing, developing and implementing open source software for learning and research, Conference Chairs Chuck Powell from Yale University and John Norman from the University of Cambridge have expanded the Sakai Summer Conference program to meet the new challenges. There are now 20 pre-conference seminars and workshops. The Executive Briefing for partner executives will be offered on Wednesday so executives may participate in all of the conference sessions.
Governance is the focus for institutional representatives. The theme of the conference remains the Sakai software. A hearty production version of the Sakai framework and tools, Sakai assessment, and the grade book are the focus of the conference. This is supplemented by partner developments including Foothill College’s Melete authoring tool and Etudes NG—a complete system for distance learning based on Sakai.
The conference is also an opportunity for meeting colleagues with a series of Discussion and Work Group meetings, “Birds of a Feather” informal discussions, and demonstrations.
Pre-Conference Seminars and Workshops
As previous conferences, the Wednesday pre-conference seminars and workshops include sessions on architecture and tool interoperability. Responding to partner interests, the Conference Chairs have scheduled new seminars and workshops. These Wednesday sessions include the Sakai Knowledge Base, Sakai deployment, faculty liaison, Sakai Help, Sakai administration, use of Confluence, reviews of deployments at Indian University and University of Michigan, Sakai software features and schedule, strategy and advocacy, installation FAQ (frequently asked questions), and developing software for Sakai. There is a special session on course authoring using Foothill College’s Melete authoring tool. Presentations on the University of California’s grade book and use of the Sakai assessment tool have also been scheduled. There is a breakout with Sakai Architect Dr. Chuck Severence called, appropriately, “Ask Dr. Chuck.”
For executives new to Sakai, Sakai Board Co-chairs Joseph Hardin and Brad Wheeler host an invitation-only Executive Briefing Wednesday afternoon. Intended for executives with broad college or university responsibilities and new to Sakai, the session responds to questions about the use of educational technology and Sakai specifically. It provides a view on the future of the Sakai Educational Partners Program
Keynote
The conference opens Thursday morning with a keynote address by Brian Behelendorf, founder of the Apache Software Foundation. His experience and suggestions are especially important to Sakai’s governance discussions.
Discussion Groups and Work Groups
Thursday turns to the work of the Discussion Groups and Work Groups. Breakout sessions have been scheduled for eleven Discussion Groups: library, software performance, content and authoring, user interface, migration, quality assurance, pedagogy, cross language support, course evaluation, enterprise integration, and medical universities discussion groups. The SCORM Working Group, and roundtable on deployment and support and a session with the Tools Team supplement the work of the Discussion Groups.
Demonstrations
Demonstrations and discussions of partner software development or development plans will be available throughout the conference as scheduled by those projects. Thursday evening many of those projects will be presented as demonstrations during the reception.
The Future
Thursday partner representatives have a day-long separate track for governance. They have been asked to review draft documents being made available to the Sakai community and to prepare a position paper that can be shared with all participating in the governance discussions. This leads to the last session of the conference on Friday “Organizational Futures.”
Friday a brief presentation from the U.K.’s Joint Information Systems Committee updates partners of the work going on in the U.K. with some hints about activities in the European Union and Japan.
Friday morning also has a plenary session on Technical Futures before the key Organizational Futures session.
After a brief summary, the conference closes Friday at 12:30 p.m.
The Open Source Portfolio Initiative Summer Conference
As part of Community Source Week, the Open Source Portfolio Initiative’s Summer Conference follows the Sakai Summer Conference. It opens with OSPI Chair Brad Wheeler’s opening remarks at 1:00 p.m. and continues through Saturday lunch. Some workgroups will continue that afternoon.
The conference program includes reports on pilot projects, study results on student attitudes and individual usage, implementation advice, designing and implementing assessment protocols for accreditation purposes, faculty portfolios, strategic use of OSP software, future OSP developments, and in depth technical seminars on developing OSP tools in the Sakai framework and customization of items, forms, and templates.
Steve Ehrmann, Director of The Flashlight Program and Vice President, The TLT Group opens the conference with his keynote "ePortfolios are Many-Splendored Things: Strategies for Planning and Formative Evaluation of Evolving ePortfolio Initiatives."
Jeff Haywood, Senior Lecturer, The Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, closes the conference with "The Future of e-Portfolios: Food for Thought."
The JA-SIG Summer Conference
Also part of the Community Course Week, JA-SIG (Java Architecture Special Interest Group) begins Sunday June 12 with pre-conference seminars, a conference overview, and reception. The conference opens Monday June 13 with Brad Smith, Indiana University, keynote “Deeper Waters Ahead: Choices and Consequences Confronting Open Source.”
Reflective of the conference's theme, "uPortal Success: Charting the Course," the program has three main tracks: New Concepts, Getting Established and Enterprise Deployment. Presentations focus on CAS (Central Authentication Systems), Groups and Permissions, and uPortal implementations. Tuesday JA-SIG Board members Jonathan Markow, Columbia University, Patty Gertz, Princeton University, and Bill Thompson, Rutgers University, give a keynote presentation “The Future of JA-SIG and uPortal.”
The conference closes Tuesday after a full day of track presentations.
Jim Farmer111 May 2005