VLEs Going Forward Scanning the Horizon Charles Severance

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

One Point Solution: Project. Pad Audio Annotation

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

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 Clip. Board 2000 (Quicktime/Apple)

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 = $ 1 M 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

Happy Stories

Sakai Map Sakai Activity - June 2006

Framework 234 K Michigan 154 K Stanford 152 K Indiana / OSP 145 K Cambridge 80 K Foothill 80 K Berkeley 35 K io m ru JFo les u d Mo ster Ro Wiki ge Syllabus Test and Quizzes Collaboration Suite Framework 6/2006 ol f t r Po a Mess Basic ---> Innovative Sakai Code Base Growth

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

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

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)

IMS Tool Interoperability • Write one tool • Integrate into many VLE systems • Web Services and i. Frames • Web. CT and University of Wisconsin • Production shipping 4 Q 06

July 2005 - Sheffield - IMS TI Question Mark Samigo Concept Tutor

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 Mc. Graw-Hill

June 2006 - Indianapolis - IMS CC Mc. Graw Hill Pearson

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 Web. CT • Alt-I-Lab renamed Learning Impact – Working on Open Source VLE track at IMS Learning Impact next April

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

April 2007 (planned) - IMS Enterprise Oracle People. Soft Sun. Gard

Personal Learning Environment Portal Environment Sakai Web 2. 0 and Data Interoperability Roadmap LMS Systems Authoring Environment Collaboaration Environment Enterprise Directory Data Repository Student Information Content Management . . . interoperability and data portability are key elements. . .

SOAP Ca l. D av Web. Dav HTML Sakai Interoperability: “Swiss Army Knife” S S R Web. Dav SOAP REST Current Sakai i. C al SP AR Future Sakai Q L

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, Web. CT, and Blackboard – Synchronize to your desktop (PLE), work off line, and then reconnect • This requires dramatically improved protocols * This is a crazy idea : )

Crazy Idea: Interoperability at the User Interface • Service Oriented Architecture at the User Interface (SOAUI) • i. Tunes. U 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”

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

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 forward progress will be across-the-board and not just for the adopters of Sakai • Sakai must exemplify “not locking users in”

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