Sakai As It Could Be
I just saw this, via Chris Coppola at rSmart.
For me, this is where the view of Sakai as a platform for innovation is really exciting. Sure the CLE is an eLearning application that can be used out of the box as easily as any of the proprietary systems like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Angel, and others. It has a place for a syllabus, a grade book, assignments, and all the standard features you need. But it’s also a platform for innovation. It gives the world’s leading institutions a way to make applications like Facebook and Google gadgets easily accessible to educators. Then, because these capabilities are built on an open platform accessible to anyone, the platform may actually make it easier for educators to experience and use these ‘2.0’ technologies.
I hope I’m not harping, but again I see a rift between what we perceive as technologists and what our students and educators perceive. Namely, we get excited by what could be, and they get excited by what is. In other words, if we want Sakai to break out of the mold of the monolithic course management system and embrace the profusion of innovation in web tools, we had better produce something to show — and fast — because our constituents will get tired of waiting, and they’ll vote with their feet.
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We’ve just added the Sakai Maps tool (http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/MAPS) as a generally available tool in our production Sakai instance (Vula).
It’s a great example of a Web 2.0 mashup - Google Maps made easy to use in a teaching context by locating it in a site where map references can be collaboratively updated. It’s already been successfully used in a postgraduate History course.
This looks great, Stephen. I can think of a lot of ways you could use collaborative map-making for teaching. Edia (www.edia.nl) deserves a pat on the back for that one. I think the distributed nature of today’s web tools suggests that Sakai should have a strategy not only for embedding and combining outside elements (the classic mashup), but also pervasive publication and consumption of feeds (classic syndication). This really seems to be the direction the technology is going.
Zack,
I think we agree.
I’m as eager as you are to see more evidence of Sakai’s potential realized. I am encouraged by some examples like the one Steven points out from Edia, and some of the stuff Cambridge is working on (http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/MYSAK/Home) , etc. Meanwhile there’s still a lot of work going into the base software functions and some of the core platform services.
The point I was intending to make is that Sakai isn’t on a trajectory to produce another monolithic application. There’s some encouraging evidence that it can serve as a platform for innovation. It’s even more encouraging to think that the examples we have today have been developed in a period where much of the community effort has been focused on the basics. My hope is that we’ll be emerging from that stage soon and entering a stage where our collective energy can shift from primiarly working on the basics to really demonstrating the potential of the platform.
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