1. VLEs Going Forward Scanning the Horizon Charles Severance OS VLE Next Generation Workshop Cambridge June 29, 2006 This material is Copyright Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

2. One Point Solution: ProjectPad Audio Annotation

3. A Sad Story of a Good Idea Web Lecture Archive Project www.wlap.org syncomat.com Lecture Object Tools And Technologies Tools And Technologies

4. Sad Story Timeline 1996 - Invented Sync-O-Matic (Real Media) 1997 - 1999 Gave continuous talks / demos at conferences 1998 - Tried to commercialize product through my job (It was the 90’s after all) 1999 - Switched jobs (partially due to bitter experience with intellectual property folks) 1999-2001 Re-Invented the idea in ClipBoard-2000 (Quicktime/Apple)

5. More Sad Story… 2001 - Switched jobs to the private sector to commercialize technology and deploy into the M.L.T. 2001 - Microsoft dropped M.L.T. 2003 - Switched jobs again to work on open source CLE (CHEF)

6. Anatomy of a Point Solution for T & L Point solutions are by nature deep explorations down a possibly fruitful path by a passionate person or small group. Hard to get traction because it is not a “complete” solution Often projects end up starving to death for lack of attention Often it is a situation where a poet is ahead of their time

7. My Background Prior to Sakai Twenty years in Academic Computing Ten years in Computer Science –High Performance Computing –Teaching with innovative technology –Researching applications of technology in teaching –Building innovative technology Ten years of IEEE, IMS, and SCORM standards experience Five years as IEEE Standards Column editor/writer Twenty years of developer/architect experience Three years experience in building commercial solutions for Teaching and Learning

8. Chuck’s Hierarchy of Sakai Goals Stop developer-rich schools from writing a new CLE Appeal to IT folks - get Enterprise installs Broaden scope to cover basics Interoperability Between CLE’s Innovation We must learn to walk before we fly. And we must start at the bottom and work upwards… Sakai is about organizations - not individuals.

9. Time / “Heat” Applied ---> Review: States of Water… Temperature --> Frozen - Vibrating and stuck In a Crystal Structure Melting Point Liquid - Fluid flows, but often downhill - cannot fill all of the space - tends to pool at minimum energy - surface tension exists Boiling Point Gas - Freely flows throughout entire space - space is evenly filled

10. Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied ---> Latent Heat of CLE Innovation Better --> Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs Boiling Point For a long time we have all been all “stuck”, vibrating in place, seemingly with no flexibility, but with plenty of energy. Melting Point

11. Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied ---> Latent Heat of CLE Innovation Better --> Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs Melting Point Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant Boiling Point Building a reference implementation of a conventional CLE…

12. Safe base level functionality empowers new thinking, approaches, and standards, (i.e. good chaos). We enter a period of chaotic freedom. Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied ---> Latent Heat of CLE Innovation Better --> Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs Melting Point Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant Boiling Point

13. True change in T & L happens in ways we can not anticipate. CLE/LMS’s can take completely new forms and directions… Time / “Heat” / Money / Energy Applied ---> Latent Heat of CLE Innovation Better --> Frozen - Many different “imperfect” CLEs and LMSs Melting Point Liquid - We can tend toward common CLEs, and/or interoperability makes the choice of CLE irrelevant Boiling Point Gas - Innovation can spread to cover the space of T & L practices

14. State of Sakai in one Slide.... Sakai is used for Collaboration, Teaching, and Learning Sakai Project started January 2004 (2.5 years old) Non-profit Sakai Foundation October 2005 Open Source - 100% free - Apache License Six Sakai Foundation paid staff members Full-time Executive Director for the Sakai Foundation Voluntary financial support from 90+ Higher Education, 15 companies, each paying $10,000 / year = $ 1M revenue Over 200 installations of Sakai Three full-scale installations > 50,000 users Twenty+ installations with > 500 users (often pilot uses) 100+ people world-wide active in developing and testing Sakai releases

15. Happy Stories

16. Sakai Map Sakai Activity - June 2006

17. Sakai Commercial Affiliates Apple

18. Sakai Code Base Growth Collaboration Suite Framework Test and Quizzes Roster JForum Wiki Modules Syllabus Message Portfolio Framework234K Michigan154K Stanford152K Indiana / OSP145K Cambridge80K Foothill80K Berkeley35K 6/2006 Basic ---> Innovative

19. Chuck’s Hierarchy of Sakai Goals Stop developer-rich schools from writing a new CLE Appeal to IT folks - get Enterprise installs Broaden scope to cover basics Interoperability Between CLE’s Real Innovation We must learn to walk before we fly. And we must start at the bottom and work upwards… Sakai is about organizations - not individuals.

20. Attacking the “Summit” We are only at “base camp” Standards and interoperability are the place where competitors must cooperate Vendor lock in is bad - Open Source lock in is even worse

21. Interoperability and Innovation Likely to happen –IMS Tool Interoperability –IMS Common Cartridge (IMS CP Interoperability) –IMS Enterprise Interoperability Just Plain Crazy –Live Data Interoperability –Service Oriented Architecture for User Interface (SOAUI)

22. IMS Tool Interoperability Write one tool Integrate into many VLE systems Web Services and iFrames WebCT and University of Wisconsin Production shipping 4Q06

23. July 2005 - Sheffield - IMS TI QuestionMarkSamigoConceptTutor

24. IMS Common Cartridge Publisher Initiated Profile of IMS Content Package Aimed at Interoperability –QTI –Web Content –Discussion –IMS TI Placements Load and populate courses Led by Blackboard, Angel, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill

25. June 2006 - Indianapolis - IMS CC McGrawHillPearson

26. IMS Changes in 2006 New CEO of IMS - Rob Abel IMS is getting better - more open and more accessible Joel Greenberg of OU hosted a VLE interoperability workshop attended by, Sakai, Moodle, Microsoft, and WebCT Alt-I-Lab renamed Learning Impact –Working on Open Source VLE track at IMS Learning Impact next April

27. IMS Enterprise Interoperability The idea is to build on IMS Enterprise to make it truly interoperable Planned demonstrator next year at Learning Impact - April 2007

28. April 2007 (planned) - IMS Enterprise OraclePeopleSoftSunGard

29. Sakai Web 2.0 and Data Interoperability Roadmap... interoperability and data portability are key elements... EnterpriseDirectory StudentInformation AuthoringEnvironment PersonalLearningEnvironment PortalEnvironment CollaboarationEnvironment ContentManagement LMS Systems DataRepository

30. HTML REST WebDav SOAP iCal SPARQL RSS CalDav WebDav SOAP Current Sakai Future Sakai Sakai Interoperability: “Swiss Army Knife”

31. Data Interoperability 2009 * Move from interoperability with a ZIP file moving around by hand to a continuous dynamic interchange of fully modeled data between systems Use cases –Add a syllabus to Sakai and it immediately appears in Dspace, Fedora, Moodle, WebCT, and Blackboard –Synchronize to your desktop (PLE), work off line, and then reconnect This requires dramatically improved protocols * This is a crazy idea :)

32. Crazy Idea: Interoperability at the User Interface Service Oriented Architecture at the User Interface (SOAUI) iTunesU is the model to follow until we find something better This collaboration, portfolio, learning, achievement, talent, etc - is about *ME* But not just about “ME” - I am a different me in different “context” So my “essence” is a combination of “who I am and “where I am plugged in”

33. Interoperability at the UI RSS, ATOM, RDF, SOAP, REST, HTML The SOAUI

34. Summary Sakai is “unfreezing” the LMS market in a number of important ways By gathering open source efforts together, we collectively “show up on radar” By solving the basics of the CLE space, Sakai provides a launch platform for true innovation in approaches to T & L By investing in standards efforts, Sakai insures the the forward progress will be across-the-board and not just for the adopters of Sakai Sakai must exemplify “not locking users in”

35. Thank you for your time.. www.sakaiproject.org csev@sakaifoundation.org www.dr-chuck.com