Everything Sakai from rSmart

Wall Street English

superuser — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:57:52 -0700

This is not Sakai related, but I thought folks might enjoy it…. One of the things I’ve noticed about France is an increased emphasis on learning English. It is fast becoming the lingua franca of Europe–when Slovenians and Swedish and Spanish get together for a conference or business meeting, they speak English. And it seems that [...]

Sakai Foundation Announces Teaching and Learning Innovation Competition

mperrone — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:42:11 -0700

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sakai Foundation is seeking nominees for its second annual International "Teaching with Sakai Innovation" Award. Representatives from the Foundation announced the competition during an opening keynote address at the Virginia Tech Sakai Regional Conference today. The intent of the award is to highlight examples of innovative and transformative educational applications of Sakai.

The second annual Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award will build on the energy generated at the 9th International Sakai Conference in Paris, France, where last year's first and second place winners, Dr. Aileen Y Huang-Saad from the University of Michigan and Mr.

CLE-SIS Gradebook Integration: UC Merced and rSmart make it happen!

mperrone — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:00:34 -0700

Not long ago the University of California, Merced, encountered what seemed to be a major stumbling block in adopting Sakai--lack of integration between the Gradebook tool and Merced's SIS. As a fast growing institution, Merced couldn't afford to take on a new CMS/LMS that couldn't push grades out to an SIS. Not surprisingly, they felt they had to consider alternatives.

The solution to their problem turned out to be easier than expected: They simply contracted with rSmart to develop the necessary capabilities. Just a few months later, they now have a fully integrated gradebook.

rSmart Sakai Customers

superuser — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:40:39 -0700

In case you didn’t see it amid the rush of news coming out of Educause, rSmart recently issued a press release highlighting some of their recent Sakai customers (pilot and production users). These include the following organizations: Antioch University Apeejay Education Society (India) California Northstate College of Pharmacy Holmes Corporation La Salle University Performance Learning Systems Shepherd University TAFE New South Wales [...]

Virginia Tech Sakai Conference

superuser — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:29:57 -0700

All I can really say is “Wow, what a great conference”. It’s Wednesday morning and I’m watching Aileen Y Huang-Saad, winner of the 2008 Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award, give a presentation on her use of Sakai in the classroom. It’s great so far and I’m sure, after watching her presentation in Paris, that it [...]

New Sakai Commercial Affiliate in Brazil

superuser — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:08:47 -0700

We’ve been hearing about a lot more Sakai activity in South America. Emblamatic of this, I’ve been in conversations with an educational services company in Brazil: People Brasil Educação Ltda. I’m happy to announce that they have decided to join the Sakai Foundation as a Commercial Affiliate. People Brasil Educação Ltda. was founded in 1996 with [...]

Board Elections

superuser — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:28:11 -0700

Sorry, but I’ve been unexpectedly off the grid for most of the week. I took vacation and joined my wife’s family on a visit to her grandfather’s home town–Sestri Levante, Italy. The house we rented did not have internet access and I’m slowly working my way backwards through nearly a week’s worth of email. I can’t [...]

Webinar: Why Sakai is the best LMS for higher education

mperrone — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:55:48 -0700

Start: 11/20/2008 - 12:00pm

End: 00/00/0000 - 12:00am

Timezone: US/Arizona

Join us November 20, 2008

Let's face it - no one knows teaching and learning better than you do. It is at the heart of what you do!

That's why Sakai is the right learning management system for higher education. Built by education for higher education.

Today, Sakai is evolving at a faster rate than any other LMS. Come join us to learn about Sakai's robust functionality and the service and support models that make it the right choice for your faculty, your students and your institution.*

*There will be a short demonstration of the rSmart Sakai CLE in this webinar. If you would like to see a full demonstration for free, please contact Spencer Harris at sharris@rsmart.com.

rSmart fuels growth in Sakai adoption by educators worldwide

mperrone — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:47:13 -0600

Phoenix, Ariz. (October 29, 2008) - Today, at EDUCAUSE 2008, rSmart announced additional growth for its Sakai collaboration and learning solutions. rSmart, the leading full-service provider of open source solutions for education, is very pleased to contribute to Sakai's growth by supporting adoption of this open source platform by institutions around the globe, including:

Sakai saves money in hard economic times

mperrone — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:16:17 -0600

Are you experiencing your own economic crisis on campus? If you are, rSmart may be able to help. Switching from your expensive proprietary LMS to our fully supported open source Sakai can save you a lot of money.

Serensoft at Educause

superuser — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:43:21 -0600

This is the last in a series of posts about Sakai activities at Educause….I’m on my way there now, stuck for a few hours in Dulles. With a bandage on my left little finger (cut from a kitchen knife…stupid) that makes me hit the CAPS LOCK key instead of ‘a’ and the CTRL key instead [...]

IBM & Sakai at Educause

superuser — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:07:44 -0600

If you’ve followed Sakai for any length of time you’ll know that IBM’s Education division has been a great supporter of the community. They’ve sponsored numerous Sakai conference activities (including the first Sakai Teaching and Learning Innovation award), they’ve worked with Marist College on a version Sakai for WebSphere and they have a partnership with [...]

rSmart at Educause

superuser — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 02:05:16 -0600

As you may have guessed if you read this blog regularly, I’m doing a series of posts about Sakai Commercial Affiliate activity at Educause. Today I’m featuring rSmart. As usual, rSmart has a booth on the trade show floor (#942) and I was pleased to see that they have developed a special Sakai Adoption Package. As [...]

Unicon at Educause

superuser — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:03:00 -0600

Sakai commercial affiliate Unicon will be hosting a series of presentations at its booth on the Educause show floor. These will be 20 minute briefings followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. There are several briefings that feature Sakai, including my own on Thursday. But you’ve seen enough of me and I’d encourage you to check [...]

Nice Sakai blog post

superuser — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:08:55 -0600

Marist College faculty member and blogger Kevin Gaugler just added a nice post about Sakai to his blog (called The World A.T. Ways). Kevin is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Marist and attended the Sakai Conference in Newport Beach last December. Thanks for the kind [...]

Educause: Open Source Innovation Showcase

superuser — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:32:36 -0600

Earlier this year the JA-Sig conference in St. Paul Minnesota brought together members from a variety of different Higher Education Open Source communities, including Sakai, D Space, Fedora Commons and Kuali. The Executive Directors of these project have stayed in touch and have been talking about different ways to work together. Well, I’m happy to say [...]

CampusEAI Symposium at Educause

superuser — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:09:22 -0600

On behalf of CampusEAI Consortium and Sakai, I would like to invite you to attend the “Future of IT in Higher Education Symposium” at EDUCAUSE 2008 on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 in Orlando, Florida where I will be presenting the value of open source solutions for higher education initiatives, specifically in the area of course [...]

Sakai at Educause

superuser — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:43:19 -0600

I’m sure, like me, many of you are getting ready for Educause 2008 in Orlando. There are an unprecedented number of Sakai-related events and presentations this year and a number of Sakai Commercial Affiliates will be attending as well. I’ll be featuring these events in individual blog posts over the next few weeks, but you [...]

Sakai Conference: Virginia Tech

superuser — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:26:30 -0600

Don’t forget to register for the Sakai regional conference at Virginia Tech. The early registration deadline is Monday October 13th. More conference details, including a tentative schedule, can be found on the wiki page. Remember that the cut-off date for hotel reservations at the guaranteed Sakai rate of $129/night is also Monday, October 13, 2008. To [...]

Boxing with a beehive

superuser — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:12:00 -0600

In a recent article about the Jacobsen v. Katzer case Bruce Parens, the creator of the Open Source Definition (OSD), warns that "taking adversary action against an Open Source project is like boxing with a beehive."

Sakai UX Improvement Expansion

superuser — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:35:10 -0600

I’m pleased to announce an important extension and expansion of the Sakai Foundation User Experience Improvement project. As you know, the Sakai Foundation initially contracted with Nathan Pearson to begin working on new user interaction designs for Sakai. This work has made excellent progress and a variety of schools are assisting with implementation, including UC [...]

rSmart Releases New Sakai Service Pack: rSmart Sakai CLE 2.5.2

mperrone — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:54:40 -0600

PHOENIX, AZ (October 1, 2008) - Today rSmart released its latest Sakai service pack, rSmart Sakai CLE 2.5.2. The service pack delivers to clients 58 bug fixes as well as 17 improvements and minor new features for a total of 75 resolved issues. Based upon Sakai 2.5.3, which was released by the Sakai community just 1 week ago, many fixed issues were resolved by the Sakai community and picked up and packaged into this release by rSmart. Others were issues rSmart discovered and resolved through the normal course of its ongoing support services with clients. Most of these fixes were pushed back into the community code base as part of rSmart's code management process.

Webinar: ePortfolios made easy with Sakai

mperrone — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:15:42 -0600

Start: 11/13/2008 - 11:00am

Timezone: US/Pacific

Join us November 13, 2008 at 11:00 AM PST

Is your institution grappling with an ePortfolio project? Are you unsure about which system to use or how to get started? Come join rSmart and Serensoft, two experts in ePortfolios, to learn about using Sakai's open source portfolio capabilities for your ePortfolio project. The rSmart / Serensoft ePortfolio solution combines rSmart's expert Sakai support and maintenance program with Serensoft's leading ePortfolio expertise. Together, we can jump start any ePortfolio project quickly and efficiently and cost-effectively support it for the long term.

TOPICS TO BE COVERED:

Marist College Pioneers New SIS Integration: students and faculty delighted

mperrone — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:13:18 -0600

In last month’s issue of Smart Talk we reported that Marist College had recently used rSmart’s new SIS batch process to load data into the CLE for 1,299 courses, 250 faculty, and 6,000 students. Marist was the first institution to use this process, so we decided to follow up with developer Earle Nietzel in order to learn from his experience. We asked Earle about a half dozen questions, found his responses to be very enlightening, and thought that you might be interested too. What follows is the meat of our conversation.

Build a Sakai/OSP Implementation Plan that Fits your Campus

superuser — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:24:32 -0600

A day-long, interactive session to craft a Sakai/OSP implementation plan tailored to your institution's characteristics, resources and needs. Each university considering Sakai and/or OSP is distinctive, but to ensure implementation success, each should prepare for issues common to any technology change, and a few issues unique to open/community source applications. Session leaders will help participants begin to develop a detailed implementation plan for their campus.