ICTlogy

I’ve read quite a bit about Sakai Project, a Managed Learning Environment with course management, assessment tools, portal functionality, etc.:

• A framework that builds on the recently ratified JSR 168 portlet standard and the OKI open service interface definitions to create a services-based, enterprise portal for tool delivery
• A re-factored set of educational software tools that blends the best of features from the participants’ disparate software (e.g., course management systems, assessment tools, workflow, etc.)
• A synchronization of the institutional clocks of these schools in developing, adopting and using a common set of open source software.

The technical barriers can now be overcome [thanks to:]

• Service Interface Definitions
• Standard Portal
• Tool Interaction Framework
• Localized User Interface

Let me suggest some further reading I’ve found of value:

• The Sakai Project
• The Sakai Project FAQs
• More Sakai details revealed and partner programme presented, an article by Wilbert Kraan at CETIS, info on Sakai.
• Same area, different goals; Sakai and the JISC Framework Programme, also by Wilbert Kraan, comparing Sakai and the JISC TFP. Very worth reading it.
• US universities consortium starts OKI and Portlet implementation project, by Wilbert Kraan too, when Sakai was presented as a project (old post but worth reading too).

See if I can make a list of things that MIT is carrying out in the field of “sharing his knowledge” and “applicable to e-learning for development”. Some copy-paste from institutional sites, some comments by myself, some by Octeto:

Intellectual Commons
MIT makes materials freely available to strengthen overall university commons.

• Commiting to integrating educational-technology deeply into on-campus education
• Creating major, shared campus-wide educational resources
  It includes OKI, OCW, DSpace and .LRN

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Open Knowledge Iniciative (OKI)

It is a collaboration among leading universities and specification and standards organizations to support innovative learning technology in higher education.
The result is an open and extensible architecture that specifies how the components of an educational software environment communicate with each other and with other enterprise systems. OKI provides a modular development platform for building both traditional and innovative applications while leveraging existing and future infrastructure technologies.

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OpenCourseWare (OCW)

Is a large-scale, Web-based initiative to provide free, worldwide access to educational materials for virtually all MIT courses.

OCW is not a course or distance learning, but it is courseware.

Rather than substitute for the experience of being a student at the Institute, OCW will provide students, faculty, and other interested parties throughout the world free and valuable educational materials.

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DSpace

A durable electronic archive for 10,000 MIT research papers and other publications per year. DSpace is a groundbreaking digital library system to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute the intellectual output of a university’s research faculty in digital formats.
Developed jointly by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard (HP), DSpace is now freely available to research institutions world-wide as an open source system that can be customized and extended.

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.LRN

Is open source software and a development kit for supporting innovation in collaborative education and learning and research communities. Originally developed at MIT as part of the Intellectual Commons, .LRN is now backed by a worldwide consortium of educational institutions, non-profit organizations, industry partners, and open source developers. .LRN capabilities include course management, online communities, learning management, and content management applications.
In other words:

• A fully open source eLearning platform
• A portal framework and integrated application suite to support course management and online communities
• A set of best practices in online learning shared in the form of source code

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Caddie.NET

It serves as the hub application for information exchange. It provides online news, event and course information, along with interactive discussion forums and students contact information. In a nutshell, everything needed to maintain and run the fast-growing course site.

As I understand it: .LRN manages the course learning environment (contents, interaction, etc.) and Caddie.NET manages the course site or information environment (information, news, etc.)

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I don’t like to spend lots of time writing about blogging because I feel the same way than watching some TV show dealing about some TV series: endogamic. The unique occasions I talk about the tool I use (and not its use) is to track down all the setup stuff: to get back where I got lost and to shine some light on someone coming behind.

All this digression is to introduce two people I’ve met by looking at my logs. Someone got here through Technorati and, well, I couldn’t help to “technorate” ICTlogy and found two (new) people linking me. Wow! They made my day!

One of the reasons I made this blog up was to get in touch with other people with similar interests, but this is becoming quite a hard thing to do. Finding people quoting me or considering me a Key EduBlogger makes me think I’m not alone and there’s people I can learn from.

Thanks Josephine and thanks Yan for being there and showing up :)))

Jayne Cravens is looking for some Spanish-speaking “techie” online volunteers. Here goes her original mail:

“Does anyone out there know of an online discussion group or association that could help me reach Spanish-speaking “techies” who might be interested in online volunteering?

In particularly, I’m trying to recruit some Spanish-speaking MS Access experts, but other areas of expertise (web site design, online database development, etc.) are also needed.

[snip]

The Online Volunteering service is seeing a big increase in the number of assignments either in Spanish or asking specifically for Spanish-speakers. To view such opportunities, please visit: www.onlinevolunteering.org click on “Search Assignments”, and choose “Spanish” in the language category.”

Contact info:

Jayne Cravens (jayne.cravens@unvolunteers.org)
Online Volunteering Specialist
United Nations Volunteers
www.unvolunteers.org
Bonn, Germany

Online Volunteering: www.onlinevolunteering.org
UNITeS: www.unites.org
Global volunteerism portal: www.worldvolunteerweb.org

[Update: opportunities have been fulfilled… but there’s still a need for profiles like these ;) ]

Curious article (via World Changing).

It explains how some organizations – and NGOs should follow the path – d0n’t ask for money but give information or services instead, and then ask for support.

Quote:
By building an e-mail list around news or information, an organization is cultivating those people to become donors, Allen said.

“Most people coming to the site are not looking to give money,” he said. “They are looking for information.”

It seems to me this is the same thing some blogs or freeware developpers do in their sites: “Hey, come and read or download whatever you want: I do it for free and for my pleasure. BTW, any income will be welcome: I too have a mortgage”

An interesting idea and surely a good way to correctly value how much worth is what you.