Sakai Community and Technology Update

1. Sakai Community and Technology Update • SUNY WIZARDS CONFERENCE, 01 MARCH 2006 ANTHONY WHYTE SAKAI FOUNDATION / UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

2. Sakai in Ten Minutes • WHAT IS SAKAI? • A COMMUNITY — a growing international alliance of universities, colleges and commercial affiliates working in open partnership with standards organizations like IMS and OKI and other initiatives like OSP's ePortfolio and JA-SIG's uPortal to develop open source enterprise-wide software applications to enhance collaboration, research and teaching within the higher education and research communities. • A FOUNDATION — the Sakai Project, supported generously by the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations and a number of founding members of Sakai, has given way to the non-profit Sakai Foundation, a community-funded and community-sustaining institution fostering innovation and a common, open approach to software development and distribution. • A FRAMEWORK — The Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) is an open-source, extensible framework for building and deploying enterprise-wide collaboration, teaching and research tools and services. It supports a variety of constituencies within higher education and beyond--students and instructors, researchers, project teams and work groups. Sakai's CLE offers interoperability, reliability and scalability in a system that is free to acquire, use and modify. • AN IRON CHEF — the famous Hiroyuki Sakai

3. Why choose Sakai? • COMMUNITY SOURCE MODEL — THE VALUE PROPOSITION • Academic Institutions • Control your own destiny— share in software development, distribution and ownership and sidestep limitations imposed by proprietary software. • Leverage leadership in teaching and learning — harness the intellectual capital resident within higher education to produce innovative software solutions for higher education. • Get back more than you give— achieve developmental economies of scale and cost savings implicit in inter-institutional cooperation and collaboration. • Commercial Organizations • Gain new clients— establish and deepen business relationships within a growing academic community of Sakai adopters. • Enhance brand/name recognition — leverage the growing interest in open source software solutions in general and Sakai in particular to elevate one’s business profile in the marketplace. • Generate revenue— develop new revenue streams by providing goods and services to the Sakai community (e.g., implementation and integration, consulting, hosting and support services, custom tool development).

4. The Sakai Project • A BIT OF HISTORY, 2003-2005 Founding members — the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford University in partnership with uPortal and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). Goals— implement Sakai, adopt Open/Open licensing, share software ownership, contribute 5+ team members under board direction for two years; build community; secure funding, achieve sustainability. Funding —$4.4 million by institutional staffing (27 FTEs), $2.4 million Mellon and $300,000 Hewlett grants, additional investment through partners. Releases— 1.0 (Oct 04); 1.5 (Mar 05); 1.5.1 (May 05); 2.0 (June 05); 2.0.1 (Aug 05); 2.1 (Dec 05; 2.1.1 (Feb 06). Sakai 1.0.0

5. Sakai Community • Diverse, robust and growing (100+) • New Partners (Oct 2005 - present) • University College, Dublin (Eire) • University of Chicago (USA) • Tulane University (USA) • Apple, Inc. • Pearson Education • Charles Sturt University (Australia) • University of Limerick (Eire) • University of Oslo (Norway) • Michigan State University (USA) • University of Auckland (New Zealand; pending) Sakai is free to acquire, use and modify. Joining the community formally as a dues-paying partner is not required.

6. Sakai Foundation • NON-PROFIT CORPORATION FORMED IN OCTOBER 2005 TO SERVE THE SAKAI COMMUNITY • Governance • Ten board members elected by community representatives to serve three year terms. Empowered to represent the community publicly, manage Sakai’s IP, coordinate software design, development and distribution processes and act as “court of final appeal” on issues of contention between community work groups. • Board Members • Joseph Hardin, Univ. of Michigan • Brad Wheeler, Indiana University • Mara Hancock, Univ. of CA, Berkeley • Lois Brooks, Stanford University • Vivian Sinou, Foothill College • Budget • Annual budget of approximately $1 million (USD) covering: • 4-6 staff positions • Bi-annual conferences • Income • Annual community partner contributions of $10,000.00 (USD) • ($5,000.00 per annum (USD) for smaller academic institutions) • Ian Dolphin, Univ. of Hull • Jutta Treviranus, Univ. of Toronto • John Norman, Univ. of Cambridge • Charles Severance, Univ. of Michigan • Chris Coppola, rSmart Group • Sakai Fellows program • Outreach activities

7. Sakai License • EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY LICENSE Sakai licensing permits commercial and non-commercial use of the software without any fees or encumbrance. Sakai uses the Education Community License, a variant of the BSD license. It is designed to encourage a wide range of use including the production of derivative work in the commercial space.

8. Sakai Distributed Development • SAKAI 2.1: AN INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE Developers • Individual committers = 36 • Academic Institutions = 10 • Commercial Partners = 2 • Continents = 4 QA • Individuals testers = 52 • Academic institutions = 27 • Continents = 3

9. Sakai Production Statistics • EARLY ADOPTERS Other Schools in Production • Univ de Lleida • Walsh University In Production by Fall 2006 • Arizona State • Boston Univ, Schl of Mgmt • Foothill College • Portland State • Stanford University • Univ of California, Berkeley • Univ of Cambridge • Virginia Tech • Pilots • Columbia University • Hong Kong Univ of Sci. and Tech. • Johns Hopkins University • MIT • Northwestern University • Rice University • Roskilde University • Rutgers • Texas State • SURF, Univ. van Amsterdam • Univ. of British Columbia, Land and Food Systems • Univ of California, Davis • Univ Fernando Pessoa • Univ of Missouri • Univ of Nebraska-Lincoln • Univ of North Texas • Univ of Virginia • Whitman College

10. Sakai Framework (SAF) • KERNAL, COMMON SERVICES, PRESENTATION SERVICES SAF—Presentation Services Framework Application Abstract Tool Layout Tool Code (Java) • Tools • Responsible for GUI presentation; • Built-in persistence mechanisms prohibited • Services • Documented API required • Access other services via APIs only (not data models) • Presentation agnostic • Framework • Registrar for tools and services • Provider of common capabilities • No knowledge of domain objects Service Interface (APIs) Application Services SAF—Common Services SAF—Kernel

11. Sakai Tools Upcoming 2.1.2 release will feature OSP portfolio integration • SAKAI 2.1.1 ENTERPRISE TOOLS AND SERVICES Melete • Enterprise Tools • Announcements • Assignments • Chat Room • Threaded Discussion • Drop Box • Email Archive • Gradebook • Message Of The Day • News/RSS • Preferences • Presentation • Profile/Roster • Quiz & Tests • Resources • Schedule • Section Mgmt • Syllabus • Web Content • Worksite Setup • WebDAV • Provisional Tools • Melete (content editor) • Roster • RWiki • SU (Super User) • Sakaiscript (web services) • TwinPeaks (external repository searching while using the WYSIWG editor) http://cvs.sakaiproject.org/release/

12. The Future • NEW TOOLS, SERVICES AND TECHNOLOGIES • Short Term • Accessibility improvements • Blog • IMS Tool Interoperability • MailTool • Message Center • TwinPeaks refinements • Pluggable WYSWIG • RSS • Hierarchy • CourseManagement API • Section aware tools • JSR-168 Portlet • WSRP Consumer • WSRP Producer Portal • Portal friendly tool id URLs • Unit Test Framework • Long Term • Sakai/uPortal integration • Enhanced LAMS integration • IMS Content Packaging Import/Export • IMS Common Cartridge • JSR-170 Java Content Repository • Lucene • SCORM support • RDF Resource Description Framework support • OWL Web Ontology Language support (Semantic Web) JSR-168 = specification defining a set of APIs for Portal computing addressing the areas of aggregation, personalization, presentation and security. WSRP = Standardizing presentation-oriented Web services for use by aggregating intermediaries, such as portals

13. Sakai and LAMS • INTEGRATION DEVELOPMENTS In October 2005 the LAMS Foundation announced plans to integrate Sakai and LAMS. In November 2005 source code and a binary distribution were released. Charles Severance, Sakai Chief Architect, travels to Australia in two weeks to map out a tighter tools integration strategy with the LAMS team. Sakai/LAMS Walkthrough http://lamsfoundation.org/integration/sakai2/walkthru/sakai04.2.htm

14. Sakai, uPortal and Banner Integration • UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED UC Merced adopted an “out of the box” configuration strategy to simplify integration efforts and shorten the rollout time frame. Sakai is integrated as a single portlet (iFrame in this case). The portal has no awareness of course rosters and roles -- Banner integration is limited to Sakai. In contrast, Merced’s UCB Mail is exposed via an iChannel portlet rather than a JSR-168 portlet.

15. SUNY SLN 2.0 Open Source Strategy • U-PORTAL, LAMS, SAKAI, OpenLDAP SLN 2.0 -- Deploy uPortal, LAMS and Sakai. uPortal and Sakai are production ready and available to commence the transition from SLN 1.0 starting Fall 2006. uPortal serves as the single point of contact for users; Sakai is integrated into uPortal via a JSR-168 portlet. LAMS integration is deferred to SLN 2.1 but is introduced to the SUNY community in a pilot program. The strategy is conservative and permits SLN to focus on other transition issues such as deployment, performance, data conversion and training. SLN 2.1 -- Integrate LAMS into the Portal; connect Sakai to LAMS. LAMS provides alternate “view” knitting Sakai and non-Sakai capabilities together.

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