The Sakai 2009 pre-conference in Boston opened kicked off with some good sessions.
In Chuck Severence's pre-conference workshop "Building Sakai tools in the Cloud Using Google App Engine", he's essentially re-iterating the notion that Sakai development could in the near future be equally distributed across a range of programming languages and platforms, most notably in the Cloud.
We essentially worked through the development and deployment of a python app for Google's App Engine as an example of a non-enterprise learning tool, discussing the implementation of the current IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specification. Consider learning tools that are no longer simply shared as source code for deployment and hosting in your instance of Sakai, but rather a single deployment of the tool in the cloud and many instances of Sakai (in any institution) delivering that same tool from the cloud. (A further goal is to enable very easy creation of an adhoc teaching/learning tool by the teacher.)
The potential for educational institutions to leverage the capacity and availability of cloud services to reduce operational costs is real. Consider the hosting of shared tools in the Cloud via the Google App Engine and the hosting of Sakai instances in the Cloud via Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)...
See
http://www.cloudcollab.com
http://api.cloudsocial.org/about.php
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596800697/
http://aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Letting Open Standards drive Openness and Sustainability
It's been over a year since the announcement that the South African Bureax of Standards (SABS) had adopted the Open Document Format (ODF) as an official national South African standard.
It's expected that the South African government will have ODF as the default document format by 2009. To all of them, I applaud.
The debate and controversy over Microsoft's involvement in OOXML adoption as an ISO standard in 2008 is still a hot topic. Organizations and government departments such as one in the United Kingdom are still trying to makes sense of it to make decisions in support of their long term strategy.
The community warns that products which implement open standards while at the same time introduce proprietary extensions that implement functionality outside of those open standards, are doing nothing to support interoperability.
The discussion around the merit of adopting pure open standards is clear. The questions about the worth that organizations place on their data, information and knowledge have to be considered. What sort of life-sentence is being placed on knowledge buried in proprietary coffins that have no hope of excavation in decades to come?
Technology Thought Leaders at educational institutions will no doubt see this as an opportunity to lead toward openness in support of the fundamental concepts of knowledge sharing and sustainable learning.
It's expected that the South African government will have ODF as the default document format by 2009. To all of them, I applaud.
The debate and controversy over Microsoft's involvement in OOXML adoption as an ISO standard in 2008 is still a hot topic. Organizations and government departments such as one in the United Kingdom are still trying to makes sense of it to make decisions in support of their long term strategy.
The community warns that products which implement open standards while at the same time introduce proprietary extensions that implement functionality outside of those open standards, are doing nothing to support interoperability.
The discussion around the merit of adopting pure open standards is clear. The questions about the worth that organizations place on their data, information and knowledge have to be considered. What sort of life-sentence is being placed on knowledge buried in proprietary coffins that have no hope of excavation in decades to come?
Technology Thought Leaders at educational institutions will no doubt see this as an opportunity to lead toward openness in support of the fundamental concepts of knowledge sharing and sustainable learning.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Unisa embraces Sakai
Readers may have speculated in quite a sensationalistic fashion about the new myLife offering by Unisa. Some believe it will replace myUnisa (the collaborative learning environment powered by Sakai - see http://www.sakaiproject.org). Will it? No, not at all.
One particular news article states: "This marks a move away from the university's Sakai community source platform – myUnisa – which the university runs on a Linux platform."
This statement is certainly misleading to those who have not quite made the distinction between Sakai (the CLE product) and Exchange Labs (a free email service). To the uninitiated it might seem that Unisa would be ditching Sakai.
Perhaps the correct way to interpret the author's words is to appreciate the fact that the myUnisa brand had enforced the association that the community makes between Unisa and Open/Community Source - Sakai. So an adoption of a free service under the myLife brand which happens to use the proprietary-based Exchange Labs as the provider would lead the author to imply that Unisa would no longer adopt FOSS solutions. That could not be any further from the truth.
To the Sakai community: Unisa is still proudly using Sakai and have no plans to replace it.
One particular news article states: "This marks a move away from the university's Sakai community source platform – myUnisa – which the university runs on a Linux platform."
This statement is certainly misleading to those who have not quite made the distinction between Sakai (the CLE product) and Exchange Labs (a free email service). To the uninitiated it might seem that Unisa would be ditching Sakai.
Perhaps the correct way to interpret the author's words is to appreciate the fact that the myUnisa brand had enforced the association that the community makes between Unisa and Open/Community Source - Sakai. So an adoption of a free service under the myLife brand which happens to use the proprietary-based Exchange Labs as the provider would lead the author to imply that Unisa would no longer adopt FOSS solutions. That could not be any further from the truth.
To the Sakai community: Unisa is still proudly using Sakai and have no plans to replace it.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
An observation on the ever-so popular "What are you doing?"
I've noticed something interesting with the answers the favourite question "What are you doing?".
Be it on Twitter or Facebook, people mostly tell us what they're thinking, rather than what they're actually doing. Not that thinking is a non-activity. Surely people do other things while their minds are working?
Here's a challenge to all of you: Try telling others what you're thinking AND what you're doing while thinking. Perhaps that could give people an idea of what influences you - what triggers your thought process.
For instance (all-be-it a bad example) what am I doing? I'm being bored, waiting for a system task to complete and wondering what other people at this time of night are doing besides thinking in 140 characters or less.
Be it on Twitter or Facebook, people mostly tell us what they're thinking, rather than what they're actually doing. Not that thinking is a non-activity. Surely people do other things while their minds are working?
Here's a challenge to all of you: Try telling others what you're thinking AND what you're doing while thinking. Perhaps that could give people an idea of what influences you - what triggers your thought process.
For instance (all-be-it a bad example) what am I doing? I'm being bored, waiting for a system task to complete and wondering what other people at this time of night are doing besides thinking in 140 characters or less.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Weaving a web of social networks
With the growing number of social networks winning clusters of users here and there, it's deepening the anxiety for those who thrive on staying connected - everywhere, all the time.
From Facebook to MySpace to Windows Live Spaces...
In essence, even though they compete, they're actually growing their numbers through acquaintances and referrals in the non-virtual world. As long as they remain the same. MyFace and Spacebook, all the same.
Since Facebook introduced the "What are you doing?" log, it'll be interesting to find out how many Facebookers have dropped the single-featured Twitter. Perhaps some, but those Twitters that have large followings are likely to keep on Twittering. They've certainly become celebrities in their own right - like The Truman Show, except the Twitter's aware of it.
Purpose-built networks are here to stay. The Twitters and the Blogspots. Hence my choice to post here and share it with other clusters of friends in Facebook and Live Spaces.
Welcome the era of Social InterNetworking.
From Facebook to MySpace to Windows Live Spaces...
In essence, even though they compete, they're actually growing their numbers through acquaintances and referrals in the non-virtual world. As long as they remain the same. MyFace and Spacebook, all the same.
Since Facebook introduced the "What are you doing?" log, it'll be interesting to find out how many Facebookers have dropped the single-featured Twitter. Perhaps some, but those Twitters that have large followings are likely to keep on Twittering. They've certainly become celebrities in their own right - like The Truman Show, except the Twitter's aware of it.
Purpose-built networks are here to stay. The Twitters and the Blogspots. Hence my choice to post here and share it with other clusters of friends in Facebook and Live Spaces.
Welcome the era of Social InterNetworking.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Stepping on toes with HuddleChat
As posted on Google's huddlechat.com:
"Hi, a couple of our colleagues wrote Huddle Chat in their spare time as a sample application for other developers to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Google App Engine. We've heard some complaints from the developer community about it and because of that we've decided to take it down..."
The completely free group-web-based chat developed by Google developers was seemingly taken down so as to not step on any Campfire toes. A poll is currently being run on Mashable as to whether it should've been taken down or not. I'm inclined to say vote NO.
"Hi, a couple of our colleagues wrote Huddle Chat in their spare time as a sample application for other developers to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Google App Engine. We've heard some complaints from the developer community about it and because of that we've decided to take it down..."
The completely free group-web-based chat developed by Google developers was seemingly taken down so as to not step on any Campfire toes. A poll is currently being run on Mashable as to whether it should've been taken down or not. I'm inclined to say vote NO.
This reminds me of the Blackboard-Desire2Learn patent dispute. The Software Freedom Law Center has done well to protect at least educational institutions that use Sakai, effectively resulting in Blackboard's pledge.
Group chat is most certainly an effective tool for learners and educators to collaborate. We'll see what happens when the free use of this basic concept is challenged (again)...
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